Struggling typewriter manufacturers to ask for a federal bailout.

Please note: The following is satire.

Congress recently passed the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to help struggling financial firms. Recent lobbyists have asked that this program be extended to state and local governments, as well as the automobile industry. And now there is another political player asking for a bailout: The Typewriter Manufacturers Association of America. Steve Oldkey, the spokesman for the Typewriter Manufacturers Association of America, recently said that "it is only fair that if Congress allocate funds to failing enterprises that it also subsidize an industry that has been failing for a longer period of time than AIG or GM."

Steve Oldkey believes that the typewriter manufacturers within the United States should receive $5 billion from taxpayers to keep the manufacturing plants churning out typewriters that no one is eager to buy. "Unlike Ford, our labor costs are rather low. The only problem is that no one is buying our products. However, with a federal bailout, we can continue to manufacture millions of beautiful typewriters that are made with the highest of quality."

Congress is having a difficult time deciding the issue. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that several of her San Francisco constituents have asked that the typewriter industry receive a federal bailout, especially the non-electric ones. "We all know that we must do our part to reduce greenhouse gases. Therefore, it only makes sense that we bailout the struggling typewriter manufacturers, especially the non-electric ones, since this will help to reduce global warming through reducing electrical usage," Speaker Pelosi said. Privately, Pelosi also added that she likes failing companies like the typewriter manufacturers precisely because it gives her "a sense of power, the feeling that I am actually in charge of an industry and contributing to their success" even though all she has done is shift money from the productive sector of the economy to the failing part.