Bail Out Pig

When the Senate passed the $700 billion stinky thing you could see that there was no way to put lipstick on it, but just barely passed everyone wanted to stick this pig.

The Senate drove us nuts when, in the midst of a debate over a historic bailout package, it pulled out an old bag of tricks: piling billions of dollars of unrelated legislative provisions into the package and daring twhohe House to reject the bailout again. Many of these provisions are tax extenders that have been waiting in the wings for months, hoping for a legislative train to leave the station.

So instead of an enormous $700 billion bailout, Congress is now considering a bill with more than $800 billion in spending, including tax benefits for arrow manufacturers, rum in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and film and television producers.

With the addition of the tax extenders legislation, Congress is using this national economic emergency to smooth the way for controversial legislation. Throughout the process, the House and Senate have had very different approaches to this bill. The House, specifically the Blue Dogs, demanded that the bills costs be offset. The Senate has not.

Rum runners and movie makers, what next. Just in case you don't know what extenders are in legislation would include and definition here for your reading pleasure.

“extenders,” meaning the legislation in many cases simply extends existing law set to expire at the end of this year, and in some cases reinstates existing legislation that expired earlier in the year. Therefore, we couldn’t necessarily go back in history to identify who originally promoted some of the provisions. Many of these provisions had already been voted on and passed earlier this year, but had not been voted on in the House, so the Senate simply stuck them on to the underlying legislation. This is also true for other things tacked onto the bill, such as the Alternative Minimum Tax patch.

With the bailout already swelling to $810 billion the government wants you to know that Paulson isn't playing favorites with your money.

Only a few days after President Bush signed the 2008 Emergency Economic Stability Act, also known as the $810 billion bailout, the Treasury Department announced that it will award the first contracts for private firms to price and purchase the "toxic" assets that have asphyxiated the global financial system. The bailout package gives Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. unprecedented powers to draw on the private sector to run the program—with a notable absence of ground rules.

But that absence of ground rules is necessary in cases of emergency.

The bailout package enables the Treasury Secretary to waive "specific provisions" of our contracting laws, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), if he determines that "urgent and compelling circumstances make compliance with such provisions contrary to the public interest," despite the existence of rules on the books for handling these emergencies. The bill does not define the "provisions," and it doesn't stipulate who will be charged with drafting and monitoring the contracts.

Quick I tawt I saw a Halliburton!

Secretary Paulson seems poised to repeat history rather than learn from it, however. Contracting announcements this week released by the Treasury Department only reaffirmed Paulson's exceptional authority, pointing out that the Secretary can limit competition on the basis of "unusual or compelling urgency" and warning "a number of contracts will be awarded through other than full and open competition." Supposedly Treasury is working on a more complete contracting plan, but it will be a day late and a millions of dollars short. Treasury solicited contracts Monday for services such as asset management and accounting, and the winners are expected to begin work this weekend.

I did I did taw a Halliburton!

And I bet that exceptional authority is misspelled, unconstitutional! But never mind a little old me we have bailout money to pass to the elites.

With Treasury’s $250 billion bank investment plan, and notice served on Congress that an additional $100 billion will be tapped to acquire toxic assets, taxpayers have quickly learned how half of the $750 billion bailout package will be spent.

Oink oink everyone.