In Super Bowl Run-Up, Dems Decry Growing Championship Inequality

Democratic Party leaders today decried the growing inequality in Super Bowl championships under the Bush administration.

Anticipating the inevitable victory of the New England Patriots next weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued the following statement:

Under the shortsighted policies of the Bush administration, the NFL has become a haven for the wealthy football fatcats at the expense of working American families. Since Bush became President, the New England Patriots, representing merely 3% of the NFL, have won or will win 50% of all Super Bowl rings. The other 97% of the NFL must subsist on whatever trickles down from the rest.

Further, 50% of NFL teams have never won a Super Bowl championship, and nearly 20% have never even appeared in a Super Bowl. Meanwhile, President Bush has spent our government's treasury into debt and pursued an illegal war in Iraq, while his rich, country-club cronies enjoy Super Bowl championships. Surely this makes him the worst President in our nation's history.

It is past time that every American football fan had the opportunity to get moderately drunk, paint herself in team colors, pound her chest and shake her upraised index finger in celebration of her team's Super Bowl triumph. We have not put into practice the democratic ideals on which this country was founded until every American football fan can truly chant, "We're number one!" Americans will wait no longer for this injustice to be remedied.

We will therefore introduce in the United States Congress the Football Equality Act of 2008. This bill will mandate that the most successful NFL teams pay a windfall-championship tax on excessive championships. Proceeds will be distributed to teams with the fewest wins in the NFL, with extended benefits for those, like the Cleveland Brown, that have never appeared in a Super Bowl.

We urge President Bush to give his support to this bill and to declare in his State of the Union Address his determination to cooperate with us in correcting this unjust inequality of football championships. We warn that the American voters will hold him and his party accountable if he does not. It is a failure of this administration that it has trampled on the right of Americans to celebrate their team's championship, thereby destroying the American Dream for so many of our country's working families.