WASHINGTON — The House gaveled in on a sleepy Tuesday morning two months ago now, spent eleven minutes in session, and passed the Coordinated Hierarchical Agency for Oversight of Subtraction Act — the C.H.A.O.S. Act — by a vote of 312 to 116, with six Democrats voting present and one congressman from Ohio voting "shruggie emoji," which the clerk entered into the record as "present."
The bill created a new federal agency whose sole statutory purpose is to identify, coordinate, and eliminate still-functional government programs, departments, and the staff who run them. It passed without a single hearing, without a CBO score, and without any member of the majority having read past page three, where the acronym is explained.
The impetus, according to Majority Leader statements, was a deluge of correspondence.
Since the beginning of the year, Republican congressional offices received approximately 890,000 pieces of constituent mail — emails, postcards, faxed handwriting, and one oil painting — nearly all from Medicare, Social Security, unemployment, or VA disability recipients complaining they were getting too much government money.
"I was frankly embarrassed by how much they were giving me," said Theodore Blunt, a disabled Army veteran in Macon, Georgia, who lost his left leg to an IED outside Kandahar and currently receives $3,200 a month in VA disability. He was wearing a MAGA hat and a shirt that read DEFUND THE DEEP STATE. "I've been listening to the Freedom Patriot Dividend Hour on AM radio," Blunt said, quoting a program sponsored by a think tank funded entirely by three billionaires. "They said what I get isn't government money, it's a 'Constitutional Freedom Stipend.' But everyone else is getting socialist handouts. This needs to stop."
Blunt was one of roughly 340,000 disabled constituents who organized, via a Facebook group called "Cut My Check Please," a coordinated write-in campaign demanding that the new C.H.A.O.S. agency eliminate their disability payments.
"Three thousand two hundred dollars," Blunt repeated, shaking his head. "That's more than my brother makes at the lumber yard and he's got both legs. It's humiliating."
Congress, facing what appeared to be the first organic grassroots cost-cutting movement in American history, complied.
The C.H.A.O.S. Act passed with bipartisan support after Democratic leadership announced they would not whip votes against it, citing concerns that opposition would be perceived as "obstructionist" and "out of touch with working-class frustration about government overreach." The Senate Minority Leader held a press conference on the Capitol steps to explain the decision, during which he read from a prepared statement, adjusted his glasses, and said the party looked forward to "working with our Republican colleagues to make government smaller, more efficient, and somewhat still extant."
When asked if Democrats planned to offer any amendments protecting any benefits, he replied that the caucus would instead be introducing a companion resolution "honoring the courage of Americans who are willing to sacrifice their own financial security for the abstract principle of smaller government that in no way serves them or their communities." The resolution is scheduled for a voice vote next Tuesday. It is expected to pass.
Dr. Howard Pemberton-Quist, Director of the Hudson-Cato Center for Voter Self-Examination, has studied the phenomenon for sixteen years. He was not surprised.
"We used to think voters were just naturally contradictory," he said, seated in his office beneath a framed photograph of a man cashing a check while giving a thumbs-down to the building behind him. "Then we realized there is a $40 billion messaging apparatus dedicated entirely to, among other things, convincing a guy in a wheelchair that the guy in the next wheelchair over is stealing from him. It's not cognitive dissonance anymore; it's a successful corporate rebranding of poverty. At this point, the contradiction is not a bug. It's the user interface," he added blankly, as only a hollow man can, without hope.
The C.H.A.O.S. agency formally opened its doors on a Monday. By Wednesday it had issued termination notices to 14,000 federal employees across seven departments. By Friday it had published an internal org chart showing twelve deputy directors, three competing offices of strategic subtraction, and a $4.2 billion line item for "consulting services." The agency's first press release announced that it had successfully eliminated the Office of Government Ethics, which had been conducting a preliminary review of C.H.A.O.S. hiring practices. The release was fourteen pages long and included a photo of the C.H.A.O.S. director cutting a ribbon in front of a sign reading SMALLER GOVERNMENT STARTS HERE. The ribbon cost $340 a foot.
Then, approximately six weeks after the disability checks stopped arriving, the phones began ringing again.
Town halls in Republican districts — the same districts that had organized the "Cut My Check Please" campaign — were flooded with constituents demanding to know who had taken their money. At a meeting in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, Larry Kemp, the man who had personally drafted the template letter urging Congress to eliminate VA disability payments, stood at a microphone and held up a glossy, four-color campaign mailer he received in October. It featured a picture of his congressman, a large eagle, and a graph.
"It says right here: We will slash socialist welfare," Kemp pleaded. "Mine was a Patriot Entitlement! Why didn't anybody warn me?"
"I thought we were talking about, you know, the other ones," Kemp said. "The fraud ones. The people who don't deserve it. I deserve it. I got the letter from the VA and everything. It's got a seal."
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Cheryl Daniels, who had organized a petition drive from her power wheelchair — purchased through a VA accessibility grant she describes as "a handout I earned" — stared at a bank statement showing a balance of $14 and demanded that her representative explain why her checks had stopped after she had explicitly asked for them to stop.
"I said I wanted them cut," Daniels told reporters. "The emails from the Save America PAC said that if true patriots voluntarily gave up ten percent of their checks, it would bankrupt the Deep State and we'd be invited to a gala ball in a fancy ballroom. I already bought a dress. I didn't say I wanted them gone. I wanted them reduced to a level that didn't insult my pride. Like, maybe a smaller check. With a thank-you note. From the president."
When informed that the president had tweeted his support for the cuts at the time, Daniels paused. "Well," she said, "I thought he was being sarcastic. He's very sarcastic. That's why I like him."
Congressional offices, now overwhelmed by the volume of angry constituent mail, have begun auto-replying with a form letter that reads, in its entirety: "Thank you for your correspondence regarding the C.H.A.O.S. Act. We have forwarded your concerns to the C.H.A.O.S. agency, which has eliminated its Office of Constituent Services. If you believe your benefits were terminated in error, please contact the Department of Just Deal With It."
The Department of Just Deal With It was eliminated yesterday.
At a press conference today, House leadership addressed the backlash with a unified message: the blame lay squarely with Democrats.
"The American people are hurting," said the Majority Leader, flanked by eleven members of the caucus, every one of whom had voted for the bill. "And they deserve to know why Nancy Pelosi's party refused to stand up for their benefits when they had the chance."
When a reporter noted that every Republican had voted for the bill, which was sponsored by Republicans, the Majority Leader smiled and said, "Exactly. That's how you know it was the Democrats' fault." At this point, the reporter simply threw his notebook into a nearby garbage can.
Wall Street opened last week by muttering "chaos… good…" while pricing defense and prison-contractor futures. By Wednesday the market had eaten two interns from Goldman Sachs, promoted a third, and asked for the C.H.A.O.S. budget in larger print. On Thursday, Walmart announced a new product line of generic mobility aids priced "just below dignity," sending its stock up 4.2 percent in after-hours trading. By Friday, Pendulum Capital — a hedge fund that has not lost money betting on Democratic capitulation since 2017 — was photographed asleep in its office, snoring gently into a pillow embroidered with the words THANKS NANCY.
The Dow closed up 340 points. Nobody felt anything but emptiness.
Gus is the Head of the IRREVERENT Newz Wire. He is currently monitoring a report that the C.H.A.O.S. agency has begun issuing press releases about press releases and may soon achieve sentience. He is having some sort of existential crisis.