Senate to Decide Whether to Kick Fiscal Can Down the Road or Just Abandon Can Altogether

Washington, D.C. – In a move financial analysts are calling “entirely foreseeable,” the U.S. Senate convened Wednesday morning to debate the future of the nation’s fiscal can, with two primary options on the table: continuing to kick it further down the legislative road, or abandoning the can altogether in hopes it will resolve itself.

Sources close to the matter say that negotiations began with a bipartisan breakfast, during which Sens. Willis Markham (R-MO) and Lila Royce (D-WA) presented dueling slide decks. Markham argued for preserving the tradition of can-kicking, citing a 318-page report by the Congressional Office of Deferred Outcomes that concluded, “Unlike trash or budget surpluses, fiscal cans tend to improve with distance.” Royce, meanwhile, advocated a bold new approach: leaving the can behind entirely. “Maybe,” Royce said in prepared remarks, “the road is the problem, not the can.”

Several senators reportedly expressed concern about what, precisely, ‘the can’ now represents. At a hearing last week, the Fiscal Integrity Committee’s Subcommittee on Metaphor (FICSOM) found that 48 percent of legislators could not identify the can’s contents, while 27 percent believed it contained last year’s farm bill. Committee chair Sen. Denise Norr remarked, “It could be empty. Or it could be Schrödinger’s Can.” Norr’s office later backtracked, citing pending legal advice on whether fiscal cans can in fact be observed without collapsing their indeterminacy.

Proponents of outright abandonment argue the move could free up significant shelf space in the Capitol rotunda, where as many as sixteen historical fiscal cans—each adorned with ceremonial duct tape—currently block access to the vending machines. Opponents warn that without the can as a conceptual anchor, Congress risks entering what the General Accountability Bureau terms “a post-can policy environment”: a state in which legislation is neither delayed nor enacted, but instead recited aloud in an empty chamber by concerned interns wearing track suits.

Meanwhile, the Joint Select Task Force on Can-Tracking has failed to agree on the current whereabouts of the fiscal can. According to their latest geospatial analysis, the can is “somewhere between the Appropriations Committee and Lot G of the Senate garage, or possibly in Canada.” Experts from the Bureau of Legislative Litter Control have been dispatched with GPS collars, but progress is hampered by what officials describe as “unusually high-footed procedural fog.”

The Senate’s final decision is expected later this week, barring unforeseen developments such as the sudden appearance of a new, larger can. Should the Senate choose abandonment, staffers warn that the legislative road itself may continue indefinitely, as prior removals of guiding metaphors—such as the 2004 Trench of Progress—have led to isolated patches of bipartisan bewilderment.

For now, economists suggest Americans plan for a range of outcomes, from garden-variety delayed catastrophe to the first canless fiscal year on record. As Sen. Markham summarized in closing debate, “Whether we keep kicking or walk away entirely, we can all agree: this is the future.”