(2004-09-23) — A House-Senate conference committee agreed late last night to extend several tax breaks for middle-income Americans and to pay for the loss of $145 billion in revenue over 10 years through a series of federal government bake sales.

“The Democrats on the committee kept whining about how we would pay for the cost of these extended tax cuts,” said one unnamed aide to a U.S. Senator. “The Republicans tried to convince them that tax cuts don’t cost money, they generate commerce which is good for America because the money is at the disposal of the people who earned it. So we compromised.”

Under the Republican proposed deal, contracts with Federal government employees will be amended to require the production of one baked good each year, using ingredients and facilities owned by the employee. Once each month, all federal buildings will hold a bake sale with the proceeds from the sale going directly to the Internal Revenue Service.

A spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), representing 600,000 people on the taxpayer-funded federal payroll, immediately announced his union would fight the new measure in court.

“Our underpaid, overworked federal government employees don’t have the money nor the time to fulfill this new burdensome duty,” the unnamed AFGE source said. “Besides, who in their right mind would eat a cake baked by a federal bureaucrat? Did I actually say that, or just think it?”