Naked Capitalism tracks down a few of the more befuddling sections of the recently passed Senate bailout bill (bittersweet for me… Made some money; lost a little bit more respect in the US government. And my poor ass started the day with a lot more money than respect for the government).
The comments provide some theories that sounds likely to explain this pork: It was actually already there from the previous bill that they amended into the bailout bill (for procedural reasons. Apparently they can’t bring a new bill to a vote otherwise. I have no idea about their process).
So it looks like the inclusion of a “SEVEN-YEAR COST RECOVERY PERIOD FOR MOTORSPORTS RACING TRACK FACILITY” was the product of some Senator blackmailing his or her party’s leader for their vote, which I imagine went something like this:
Corrupt Senator #1-#100 (pick one): “Gee, Mr. Reid/Mr. McConnell, I know how important it is to do something, but this is a seriously flawed bill that doesn’t look like it really addresses any of the fundamental reasons for our current financial crisis.”
Harry Reid / Mitch McConnell: “What if we gave a race track in your state a $200,000 tax break?”
Corrupt Senator: “DEAL!”
And if the section was not pork added to the bailout bill to get it passed but was actually (as some astute Naked Capitalist commenters suggested, particularly the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007″ according to Freude Bud of Open Source Geopolitics‘ comment) part of the previous amended bill, please change “our current financial crisis” to “our nation’s continuing struggle to improve mental health and fight addiction”. So maybe a Senator wasn’t blackmailing his leaders by withholding his vote on the bailout to get a kickback for a local campaign contributor. Maybe he was just withholding his vote on a bill to raise mental health and combat addiction. I feel better already.
UPDATE:
The New York Times has an article that expressly states at least SOME of the apparently superfluous sections of the Senate’s recently-passed bailout bill were in fact added to win over those on-the-fence Senators who really didn’t think the bailout would work unless their local motorsports facility could save on taxes.
UPDATE 2:
Calculated Risk links to a Bloomberg article that arrives at much the same conclusion as the NYT article above. So it seems to be fairly widely understood that the bailout bill that will send some $700 billion of taxpayer money to the unregulated abyss of the financial sector might not have passed unless some additional millions or billions of taxpayer money was provided for motorsports and wooden arrow businesses.
UPDATE 3:
Naked Capitalism brings this full circle, linking to another Bloomberg article that sums up all the tax breaks included in the Senate’s bailout bill to $100 billion. Inflation is a bitch, isn’t it? Just two weeks it would have cost $700 billion to bailout the financial industry. Now it takes $800 billion.
… and the cow goes moo
This bill if passed, by the house and signed into law – Will tip the balance of power into the executive branch. If OBAMA is then Elected prepare to embrace the horror – The first changes will be the Supreme Court – No matter how you cut it – We will no longer have the America we grew up – He’s all ready stated “The Courts are a refuge for JUSTICE” – Being empathtic and compassionate..Thats EXACTLY what we don’t want