Dollar Days
Dollar Days in Washington
In a stunning move to reenergize his flagging Presidency, President Bush on Tuesday literally gambled his last Dollar on an unorthodox Presidential appointment.
In a Rose Garden press conference, President Bush nominated the Reverand Creflo Dollar to replace departing Secretary of the Treasury John Snow.
Clearly pleased with himself, the President stood beside Dollar, who was dressed in an impeccable, dark blue Fioravanti suit, and said, “I’ve looked into this man’s heart and decided that he is the most qualified person to replace Treasury Secretary Snow. Besides, anyone with the last name “Dollar” has got to be good with money.”
In his prepared remarks in the Rose Garden, President Bush said he felt that the Reverend Dollar was a good philosophical fit for his administration because like Dollar, so much of the President’s own decision-making is based on “good intentions, wishful thinking, and an optimistic faith that good things will inevitably happen to good people.”
The President and newly appointed Treasury Secretary took no questions from the press, but the Reverend Secretary Dollar did make a brief statement.
Mr. Dollar said, “Together, my congregants and I built a twenty million dollar church with tithes from the faithful from all over the country. Faith built our church, faith built our country, and I’d like to reintroduce faith into our economics.”
Dollar is the founder of World Changers Church International, a multi-million dollar corporation selling promises of prosperity to those who contribute at least ten percent of their income to Creflo Dollar Ministries. Those who don’t tithe ten percent are promised a body-mangling car wreck as God’s judgment upon them.
Reverend Dollar said that his first act as Treasury Secretary was going to be to establish a tithing system nearly identical to the system he perfected as part of his ministry. Explicitly denying that this was a new tax, he called it “a mandatory investment in God’s beneficence.”
Americans will tithe to the Federal Government, and God will repay them many times over. In an apparent nod to Presiden’t Bush’s dream of an ownership society, Dollar explained that rather than the Government maintaining its role as a social services provider, through tithing and faith in God, Americans will soon be wealthy enough to pay for health care and other essentials themselves.
Dollar said, “Those that tithe at least ten percent of their income to the God-fearing, Republican-led Government, on top of what they pay in taxes to the Godless Democrats who unfairly confiscate their income, will receive ten times their tithing in gifts from the Holy Spirit.”
“Some Christians believe that being poor is holy and good. This is far from the truth,” Dollar stated. God wants Americans to be prosperous, he said.
Dollar hopes to have set up his tithing system within a few weeks, though sources familiar with the glacial pace of government initiatives scoffed at his projection.
Dollar said that as soon as the Treasury website was reconstructed according to his mandate, Americans would be able to set up an autodraft of their bank accounts for the mandatory ten percent “investment.”
Just as with his ministry, Dollar said that Americans will be classified as tithers according to the amount they give. Those that only give the mandatory ten percent will be classified as mere “Participants” and will have no access to any Treasury services, such as soon-to-be-phased-out unemployment assistance, Social Security, or Medicare. “Participants” may also expect that God will not provide them enough to eat on a daily basis, until they increase their tithing. A death in the family is also not out of the question.
Those that tithe at least twenty percent of their income will be called “The Righteous Retailers of Freedom,” and in addition to God’s bounty, they will receive in the mail every week an audiotape with a personal message from Reverend Secretary Dollar.
Those that tithe thirty percent are known as the “Gracious Guarantors of Democracy,” and they will receive their audio message on a technologically advanced Compact Disc that promises unsurpassed sound quality.
Those that tithe fifty percent or more are known as the “Presidential Honor Guard,” and they will receive every week a spiritually charged DVD of Creflo Dollar explaining his Prosperity Gospel to a crowd of faithful, American worshippers at his suburban Atlanta church. Among other special features on the DVD are the Confessions of Taffi Dollar, the Reverend’s wife, recorded especially for this DVD.
As the Reverend Secretary Dollar and President Bush exited the press conference, a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor shouted a question, which Dollar did not ignore, defying the tradition of such events.
The reporter shouted, “Can you explain more specifically how Americans will be repaid for their investments?”
Reverend Secretary Dollar turned and said, “What did Jesus do when the poor widow put her mite into the temple treasury box?”
The reporter looked stumped, perhaps by the word “mite.”
“See, you should read your Bible,” Dollar replied. “Because of the poor widow’s faith, as soon as her coin hit the bottom of the collection box, Jesus multiplied her offering a thousand times. So if you have Faith in my Treasury and in God, so might your offerings be multiplied.”
The poor widow was unavailable for comment.