The episode acquired a Nielsen rating of 12.9, and was the third highest-rated show on Fox the week it aired. It received mostly positive reviews from television critics, who praised the episode for its satire on American politics. The timber industry criticized the scene in which Lisa witnesses a timber industry lobbyist offering a bribe to the congressman to allow loggers to raze the Springfield Forest. The scene was described as "an easy shot at hard-working people whose only crime is to have been born in a timber town".