The Physics of Congressional Spending

Since my last posting, I've been researching the physical laws behind Congressional spending habits. By this I don't mean that I was attempting to learn if Congress spends money, which it obviously does, and with a reckless abandon bordering on criminal negligence. Rather, I was investigating if there was some law, or even a set of laws, that could explain or predict the effects of that august body on the national treasury.

In the process of this research, which is by no means complete, I did learn that these effects can be described mathematically by both Classical (Newtonian) Congressional Mechanics and the Quantum Theory of Congressional Mechanics.

Classical (Newtonian) Congressional Mechanics

In 1867 Sir Isaac Newton published Philosophiea Congressimentarium Principia Monetaria ("The Principles of Congress and Money"), which is still considered to be the most influential book in the history of both political and economic science. In this work, Newton described the three laws of Congress and Money as well as the law of Universal Congressional Gravitation toward Money, laying the groundwork for classical Congressional mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of Congress for the next three centuries.

Newton's First Law of Congress and Money: A given amount of money, whether at rest or in motion, will remain in its original state until it encounters a member of Congress.

Newton's Second Law of Congress and Money: The force (F) required to separate a given amount of money (m) from the treasury is inversely proportional to the product of the amount of that amount of money multiplied by the degree of absurdity (a) given to justify its removal or, F = (ma)^-2.

Newton's Third Law of Congress and Money: When a member of Congress removes money from the public treasury, the public treasury exerts a force that on that member which is exactly equal to the force used to separate the money from the treasury. This explains the reason why, one a Congressman raids the treasury, he or she will be always return to repeat the process.

Newton's Law of Universal Congressional Gravitation toward Money: Unlike gravitation, which decreases with the square of the distance, the attractive force of money on any member of Congress increases with the square of the distance separating a member of Congress from any given amount of money.

Quantum Theory of Congress and Money

The Quantum Theory of Congress and Money is quite new and there are, of course, several questions that have so far eluded a rational explanation. In that respect it will be helpful to review what is known before addressing the unknown.

The Pauli Congressional Exclusion Principle: No two members of Congress can spend money at the same rate and at the same time.

The Heisenberg Congressional Uncertainty Principle: The quantum states of a member of Congress cannot be measured simultaneously determined. This means that for a given member of Congress, X, it is impossible to know if X is an idiot and an influence-peddling jerk. The Heisenberg Principle states that you can only determine if X is an idiot or if X is an influence-peddling jerk because the act of quantifying one quantum state will influence the outcome of the other, unless X has previously agreed to turn state's evidence as part of a plea bargain.

The most exciting consequence of both the Classical and Quantum Theories is that, if taken together, they seem to predict that if enough members of Congress are placed in close proximity to one another the combination of their body masses would be sufficient to severely distort the space-time continuum. Although this phenomenon has never been directly observed, detailed measurements of differences in the Cosmic Money Background Radiation suggest that such an entity may be located at latitude 38° 53' N and longitude:77° 02' W.

If this data can be confirmed, it would place the object on the north shoreline of the Potomac River directly opposite Arlington, VA.