[Verse 1]
The White House dropped a number, eighty-seven-point-six billion
A supplemental spending ask that's stretching past a trillion
Iran war costs are mounting, farm aid stacked beside
Ebola response funding tucked along for the ride
Congress got the paperwork, the lobbyists got dressed
Eighty-eight billion dollars, give or take, compressed
[Chorus]
This is the news, June twenty-fifth
The dollars and the drama underneath the myth
Spending bills and oil drums, birthday bells and schemes
America at two-fifty, bursting at the seams
This is the news, the date is written clear
Twenty-twenty-six, pull up a chair and hear
[Verse 2]
Freedom two-fifty, America two-fifty too
Two separate celebrations — someone split the crew
BBC was asking how the nation marks the day
A quarter-millennium of history on display
The bunting and the fireworks, the speeches on the lawn
Two hundred fifty candles, every single one still on
[Chorus]
This is the news, June twenty-fifth
The dollars and the drama underneath the myth
Spending bills and oil drums, birthday bells and schemes
America at two-fifty, bursting at the seams
This is the news, the date is written clear
Twenty-twenty-six, pull up a chair and hear
[Bridge]
Eli Lilly made a call for a patient seventy-nine
Extraordinary access to a drug along the obesity line
And deep inside the White House walls, a new book cracks the door
Trump took Melania's furniture to furnish his own floor
Separate rooms, separate beds, the decor gone astray
The tabloids got a chapter and the movers got their pay
[Verse 3]
Cybersecurity stumbled, the state infrastructure stalled
The White House initiative hit a wall before it crawled
Hackers and the holdups, the initiative in pause
Cybersecurity Dive reported all the flaws
The dashboard never finished, the funding lost its thread
A digital initiative sitting mostly dead
[Verse 4]
The Senate clerks kept reading through the night into the dawn
A thousand pages of the budget, every line still going on
The reconciliation process grinding page by page
Republicans and Democrats performing on the stage
The overtime is billed to us, the citizens in line
Watching every comma drop at fifty cents a sign
[Chorus]
This is the news, June twenty-fifth
The dollars and the drama underneath the myth
Spending bills and oil drums, birthday bells and schemes
America at two-fifty, bursting at the seams
This is the news, the date is written clear
Twenty-twenty-six, pull up a chair and hear
[Outro]
June twenty-fifth, the headlines stacked and filed
Eighty-seven billion spent, a nation reconciled
Two-fifty years of history, a drug for the aged too
That's today's news — now you know it through and through