G.O.P. FRESHMEN SADDENED BY FAILURE TO SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT ON FIRST DAY

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Just hours after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol, the freshman class of House Republicans said that they were disappointed that they failed to shut down the government on their first day in office.

“We were all like, ‘O.K., we’re sworn in, let’s shut this thing down,’” said freshman Rep. Byron Ernie (R-Kentucky). “We were all pretty bummed that the government just kept running.”

Rep. Ernie acknowledged that it might have been “overly optimistic” of the freshman Republicans to expect to engineer a government shutdown on their very first day, “but bringing the government to a random standstill was the whole reason we became Republicans,” he said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) chuckled good-naturedly at the ambitions of the high-spirited G.O.P. freshmen, telling reporters, “I remember what it was like to be young and full of big ideas about crippling our historic institutions for no discernible reason whatsoever. There’s nothing like your first time.”

Surveying the cherubic faces of the incoming Republicans, he said, “They’re like kids who want to close down a candy store.”

Looking beyond the disappointment of his first day, Rep. Ernie said he was looking forward to “that magical day” when he and his fellow Republican freshmen get to participate in their very first government shutdown: “We’ll be paralyzing the government in the same building where John Boehner and Eric Cantor did it, and Newt Gingrich before them. It’s like playing basketball in the same arena as Michael Jordan.”