What the debt panel left out

Recommendations from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that didn’t quite make it to the PowerPoint presentation …

• Contact Sotheby’s about auctioning off the National Debt Clock.

• Open income-tax preparation firm with Rep. Charles B. Rangel and split the proceeds.

• Start charging rent to TV stars who hold rallies at the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall.

• Use proceeds from sale of Iraqi oil to pay down debt from war in Iraq.

• Sell videos of former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that proceeds from sale of Iraqi oil would pay for the war in Iraq.

• Sell secretly recorded audio of Democrats discussing Nancy Pelosi’s “future” as a leader in the party.

• Sell secretly recorded audio of Republicans discussing GOP Chairman Michael Steele’s “future” as a leader in the party.

• Auction off rights for voters to make unlimited robocalls to former political candidates.

• Hold a series of raffles to pick what Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will sue the federal government over next.

• Launch and collect advertising revenue from a special “Dancing with the Czars” edition featuring Glenn Beck and Obama administration advisers.

• Eliminate mortgage-interest tax deductions for coastal property owners in exchange for special post-global warming fishing permits.

• Ask failed California Senate candidate Meg Whitman if she has another $143 million lying around.

• Ask MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann if he has any more money lying around.

• Have Speaker-to-be John Boehner distribute checks from the tobacco industry to Republican congressmen on the House floor — this time payable to the U.S. Treasury.

• Using Sarah Palin’s grizzly adventures as a centerpiece, require reality TV shows for all other 2012 presidential contenders; collect advertising revenues.

• Sell autographed DVDs of retired Gen. Colin Powell explaining the urgency of shifting resources from pursuit of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to pursuit of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

• Recruit Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment magnate and former GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon to host special fund-raising cage matches between members of Congress.

• Launch and collect advertising revenue from special edition of “Shuffling with the Stars” featuring manual laborers and others trying to make it to proposed new retirement age of 69.

• Arrange special viewings of Barack Obama’s birth certificate at the Smithsonian Institute for high-dollar donors.

• Eliminate Bush tax cuts for nation’s wealthiest 2 percent.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail: daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.