WASHINGTON—Staring in horror at the profane legislative ritual taking place around him, a robed Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) reportedly infiltrated congressional Republicans’ secret, torchlit American Health Care Act ceremony deep in the woods behind the U.S. Capitol late Tuesday night. “I heard this eerie chanting as I left my office, and when I followed the sound I saw a line of GOP senators in long, flowing vestments being led into the forest by Mitch McConnell,” said Warner, explaining that he quickly donned an extra robe he found behind a tree and then quietly fell in formation at the rear of the column of conservative lawmakers in hopes of catching a glimpse of their mysterious health policy deliberations. “Eventually we reached a clearing where the senators started dancing around a bonfire while repeating in unison the list of all preexisting conditions that would no longer be covered under the new law. And all the while, McConnell kept exalting the name of the AHCA, praising it as the ‘great upper-class tax cutter’ and ‘slayer of Medicaid’ while waving the pages of the draft bill overhead. It was terrifying.” Warner added that he had to place his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming during the ceremony’s conclusion when Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) reportedly dragged out a bound and gagged low-income woman on birth control and threw her onto the bonfire as a sacrifice to the legislation.

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