Congress and the White House have 27 days remaining to figure out whether they will reach an agreement on preserving some or all of the income tax rates that are scheduled to increase on January 1. But despite the tit-for-tat plans that President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner keep exchanging, the federal government seems no closer to avoiding falling off that so-called “fiscal cliff.”

The supposed impending economic doom is difficult to explain, especially when it comes to deducing why some rich people are panicking. (OK, OK, it’s because they love their money. That’s why they call it “money.”)

But the producers of The Simpsons took a crack at clearing up all the confusion. And who better to explain things than Springfield’s meanest, richest, Republican-est resident, C. Montgomery Burns?

As Mr. Burns explains it, a rich person is driving a car up a hill, and unless we let him keep all his money, the wealthy driver will purposefully crash the vehicle.

Watch for yourself. It’s probably the funniest thing to come out of The Simpsons since the show got bad in 2002: