And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful House." And you may tell yourself, "This is not how adults discuss complex public policy issues." But David Byrne would be wrong. This is how the Ways and Means Committee in the United States House of Representatives discusses a tax on indoor tanning beds. Behold, as Republican Congressman Jason Smith explains that if you're going to tax tanning beds, you may as well tax ice cream. And the sun.

And you may ask yourself: "How did we get here?"

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GOP rep also asks why ice cream isn't taxed + suggests that if Democrats care about skin cancer, they tax the sun. pic.twitter.com/dFfnUt01vO — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 9, 2017

Smith manages to deliver perhaps the dumbest line ever uttered within the hallowed walls of the United States Capitol in the most condescending possible tone. That's no mean feat considering the chair of the Senate's main environmental committee once disproved climate change by throwing a snowball on the floor. Unlike eating ice cream, using an indoor tanning bed before age 35 can increase your risk of melanoma—the deadliest form of skin cancer—by 59 percent. And unlike the sun, indoor tanning beds are not an inevitable fixture of life for people who go outside, which, in fairness, it seems Congressman Smith hasn't done in a while.

Of course, that whole skin cancer thing is just according to the American Academy of Dermatology. Who are you or I to say if tanning beds are dangerous? We're not doctors.

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Different GOP rep argues that tanning salons might be healthy, tho adds "I'm not a doctor, you're not a doctor." pic.twitter.com/gMwah1ZFRo — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 9, 2017

"I'm not a doctor" is the new, "I'm not a scientist." You might say my leg is broken, but I believe it's diversifying my skeletal structure.

Smith's call for Democrats to tax two core components of a summer afternoon came after another choice riff, when, in one of the great concern trolls in recent memory, he said the tax on tanning beds was part of the War on Women:

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GOP rep goes on long riff on how tanning tax hurts women. "Today is International Women's Day. It's interesting no one is bringing it up." pic.twitter.com/FdOGOo18Om — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 9, 2017

I'm sure he spent the rest of his International Women's Day fighting for equal pay.

The Republicans didn't monopolize the silliness, though. Congressman Sandy Levin, a Democrat, jumped in to dispute the ice cream-slash-sun tax argument, only to get his opponent's state wrong and plummet into a nonsense back-and-forth:

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Dem rep jumps in, gets GOP rep's state wrong + they argue over if the sun can be taxed. Your tax dollars at work! pic.twitter.com/2UovcrF0h4 — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 9, 2017

Your tax dollars at work, indeed. Poor Dan Diamond, a Politico reporter, was forced to bear witness to all of this. On the bright side, though, if we can tax the sun, maybe Newt Gingrich can colonize the moon sooner than we thought.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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