“Let me be candid,” President George W. Bush told a hastily assembled White House press conference. “I’ve screwed the pooch. From Kennebunkport to Key West, from Walla Walla to San Diego. It’s one big cluster-F out there. So I’m declaring the entire United States a Federal Disaster Area.”
Individuals and businesses across the United States, the President explained, would be eligible to file for special disaster abatement relief, ranging from cash grants and business loans to groceries and reduction, delay, or even forgiveness of income and corporate taxes.
The President said he would tour the entire disaster area by helicopter, to see the damage firsthand. “I understand that the travel time involved will be as much as four months,” the President said. “It’s a big country out there, and one guy in a helicopter—it’s gonna take serious time to see everything. The good news is that the bad stuff will be with us for a while, so I’ll have time to see everything.”
Asked by reporters if he was aware of a precedent for declaring the entire United States a disaster, the President shook his head. “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “But then, disasters have traditionally been limited to a single geographical area, like Katrina, or one of those big earthquakes out in California. We never had it where the whole country is one big smoking disaster.”
Asked how the government could afford to provide disaster relief on the magnitude that the President proposed, including billions of dollars to Americans at a time when tax receipts would drop dramatically, the President paused, presumably to think of an idea, and then responded with a terse "No comment."
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