SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Last week, Congress incurred the ire of food activists, conscientious parents and the USDA by declaring that pizza is still “a vegetable” for the purposes of school nutritional guidelines. With the Super Committee at an unsurprising impasse and the economy continuing to stagnate, finding ways of cutting government spending remains at the top of lawmakers’ lists. During the financial crisis of the 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan tried to reduce school lunch funding by classifying ketchup as one of the required servings of vegetables. It was cheaper than broccoli, peas or greens, and children would eat it willingly. But as the Reagan Era of Reason gave way to the left-leaning lunacy of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, spending returned to dangerous levels. Critics point to Clinton’s enactment of NAFTA, which allows cheap foreign farms to drive up the price of U.S. agriculture, and Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity movement, which mandates that children eat expensive produce, as the kind of pricey socialism ruining the country.

“Eliminating unnecessary luxuries from school lunch programs will help end this economic nightmare,” said Republican F. Chester Greene, who co-chairs the San Narciso County Education Committee. “It’s more elitism. You know which company staved off the Great Depression by keeping millions of Americans employed and fed? Heinz Ketchup. Why are Democrats dishonoring that spirit now? And with jobless rates at historic highs, pizza joints are some of the only companies still hiring. Destroying the profits of the pizza industrial complex will surely be the final nail in the supply-side coffin.”

Even more importantly, Greene argued, pizza offers health benefits beyond those of standard produce. He explained: “Pizza has dairy, wheat, proteins, meats, and half of a child’s daily nutritional requirements for vegetables in the sauce alone. I’m proposing that Congress make pizza its own food group.”

Radical food activists such as Jamie Oliver criticized Greene’s assessment and accused him of extending special favors to the pizza lobby.

“Of course [Oliver]’s opposed to this,” Greene said. “He’s a shill for the top one percent of food producers. We’re talking boutique organic farms, specialized hormone-free beef producers and wealthy local growers. Why should I give these guys a dollar for a carrot when I could pick up frozen pizza from our local provider at thirty cents a pie? Oliver has an agenda, and that’s to profit off of scare tactics. He’s a talking head who’s getting rich in the pockets of these powerful farms. He’s also British, which makes him practically a communist. We’re trying to save school lunch programs, give kids the best nutritional value at the lowest cost, and keep small businesses like mom-and-pop pizzerias thriving...not giant corporations like Whole Foods and Gelsons.”

Fiscally conservative Republicans took Greene’s side, but an ironic gaffe from 2012 White House hopeful Herman Cain may have jeopardized the movement altogether. Cain had initially proposed making pizza a separate food group at the same time he suggested office rape as a national pastime. Now, one of the goals may never be realized.

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO told GQ magazine: “A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.”

“I don’t understand how Cain, of all people, could’ve said this,” lamented Greene. “Now, no self-respecting man in America will buy pizza if it continues to be classified as a vegetable. The Democrats have found an accidental ally, and Republicans are faced with a dilemma. Do we continue to push pizza as a vegetable in order to cut spending, or do we rally against pizza as a food that causes homosexuality? If we’re going to take the moral high ground, as the GOP often does, I guess that means banning sissy food. The gays have taken so much from us already -- masculine names like Rex and Bruce, trucker hats, leather chaps, quiche, games of grab-ass in the locker room, Elton John, the sanctity of marriage and now pizza. I’m just hoping that don’t eventually get their mouths on our sausages and meat.”

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