The joke:
President Biden is building support for his $4 trillion spending plan. For example, he’s telling Americans that he’ll charge it to a credit card and share the 4 trillion reward miles.
How I wrote it:
I chose to write a joke about this topic because Biden’s spending plans were the subject of a lot of news coverage. But deciding how to phrase the topic took some thinking.
The original news item had a headline like “Biden turns to Georgia to begin pitch for huge spending plan.” On that news item I intended to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.
One topic handle, “huge spending plan,” I associated with “charge it to credit card,” which I associated with “reward miles.”
Another topic handle, “turns to Georgia,” I associated with “flies to Georgia,” which I associated with “get free plane ticket using reward miles.”
So I tried linking the association “reward miles” to the association “get free plane ticket using reward miles” with a punch line something like “But at least he didn’t spend more money to fly to Georgia because he used a free plane ticket that he got with all the reward miles he earned by charging the spending plan to his credit card.” Which, of course, is way too long and complicated.
Plus that punch line isn’t logical: With Air Force One at his disposal, why would Biden need a free plane ticket?
But I did like the idea of a punch line ending with “4 trillion reward miles.” So I simplified the topic to what you see in the finished joke, adding the dollar amount of the spending plan.
Then I wrote an angle that smoothly connects the topic to the punch line using the idea that Biden is building support by sharing all those reward miles.