LORENZO, MADISON, ADAM, CHASE, LINCOLN, SAM, and REAGAN are all in the legislature. Everyone is quietly looking down.
LINCOLN
Fine, I’ll be the one to break the silence. Did anyone else see—
SAM
Yes Lincoln, we all saw the latest economic forecast. Not good. Not good at all.
MADISON
Yeah, it’s a good thing we have jobs.
SAM
Not for long at this rate. Well, we have the lawyer jobs but this is pretty cool too.
ADAM
Yeah, I like feeling like I’m helping people out.
CHASE
I just like winning elections.
MADISON
Wasn’t the Economy Act supposed to fix the economy?
SAM
Yeah, the bill we all put our name on. Nice going us! Might’ve actually made the economy even worse.
CHASE
No need to fret, I’ve gotten into messes before and I can get out of them just as well.
SAM
What’s your big idea?
CHASE
Backtrack and say the Economy Act was sabotaged somehow.
LORENZO
No. We’re not playing that game. I didn’t get into politics to play politics. What if we write a bill that requires the economy to be good?
REAGAN
That’s what we did for the Economy Act, remember?
LORENZO
Obviously not. I’m out of ideas.
MADISON
How about this: we make The New Economy Act.
SAM
What would that be?
MADISON
We require the new economy to be good.
SAM
What new economy?
ADAM
Sounds like a conspiracy.
LINCOLN
People aren’t looking to us to fix the economy. They’re looking to us to make an effort to fix the economy.
SAM
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard and I work with Lorenzo.
LORENZO
Thank you.
SAM
People want a good economy. Without one, we’d need some pretty bad opponents to win.
REAGAN
The economy is barely even our fault, we’re freshmen state representatives. Why’s it on us to fix it again?
SAM
No one else seems to want to do anything about it.
MADISON
You know what’d really help out the economy? More jobs. Write that into the bill.
SAM
More jobs?
MADISON
What, do you want less jobs?
SAM
No.
MADISON
Then more jobs it is!
LORENZO
We can also try to ban inflation.
SAM
That makes no sense.
LORENZO
There’s gotta be SOMETHING that can be done about it.
CHASE
What do you suggest?
LORENZO
I’m a baseball player, not an economist.
Everyone scraps together The New Economy Act under the vague promises of creating jobs and cutting inflation. It fails, 45-55. They look defeated.
REAGAN
Being a representative is way harder than I thought it’d be.
SAM
At least we’ll still have the law firm.