I have excellent news, Americans! The Bushites have come up with a sure-fire plan to increase the number of manufacturing jobs in the USA!

Yes, while Democrats merely complain about the demise of such jobs, George W and his team are stepping forward with a creative, can-do solution that, I think, can only be described as astonishing.

Their plan is proposed in the "Economic Report of the President." In it, George W's top economists assert that all of those people working in such fast food joints as McDonalds and Subway really are not part of the service economy -- but more accurately should be reclassified as manufacturing workers, just as those who make cars and other industrial products. After all, contend Bush's crack team of job classifiers, when you insert that meat patty, lettuce, cheese, and ketchup into a sliced bun, you are engaged in the combining of inputs to "manufacture" a product, no less so than those who assemble electronic parts to manufacture, say, a computer.

Bush's innovative economists also note that manufacturing is officially defined as "the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials into new products," and, they claim, when you heat ground beef, you are, in fact, chemically transforming it into a burger.

Of course, if Bush can redefine hundreds of thousands of hamburger flippers as manufacturing workers, then he can statistically hush the critics who've been pointing to the drastic decline in these production jobs. There's another upside for the Bushites, too -- since manufacturing gets special tax breaks, suddenly Bush's backers in the fast-food industry serendipitously qualify.

I'm with Bush on this one. After, all, by assembling nouns, verbs, and whatnot, I have manufactured this piece, and by applying the chemistry of my tiny brain cells, I have transformed raw words into a new product. Manufacturers of the world, unite! Now, where do I go to get my tax break?