Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Do I hear the Swedish Chef?

No, he said "Bork, bork, bork." The new tax bill goes "Pork, pork, pork." It's a stunning example of just how well Bush's "working together" with the Congress leads to such thrifty spending that he's never needed to veto a bill.

Start with the requirement to adjust tax law to cope with the WTO declaration that the $5 billion in export subsidies we used to give is illegal. Should we take a moment to even think about maybe just doing away with the subsidies, making at least some progress on slowing down the growing deficit? Ha-ha-ha. How droll.

No, we couldn't possible deal with the economic dislocation to those industries we've been supporting with these subsidies. We'll need to figure out a way of giving them support that is technically within the WTO rules. But how?

I know, let's create a $143 billion business-tax-break-giveaway bill, and include something for every lobbyist in town. Oh, except those motion-picture guys. They had the gall to pick a Democrat to be president of their trade group. We'll punish them by only giving them $100 million, not the $350 million they'd expected.

The Washington Post editorializes:
This suggests that Congress is corrupt not only in the manner in which it awards prizes to favorite lobbyists, but also in the manner in which it denies such prizes. By punishing the movie industry for giving its plushest Washington job to the opposite party, the Republicans are saying that they want such jobs reserved for their own side, partly so that they can vacuum up the campaign donations that trade associations make and partly so that members of their own party can spin through the revolving door into millionaire nirvana. A few years ago, congressional Republicans claimed to stand for free-market principles -- for the idea that government should get out of the way and allow the economy to reward the innovators and entrepreneurs who fuel progress. But power has corrupted the party. Now that they are the incumbents, they skew the economic playing field so as to reward their friends and fill their campaign treasuries.
John McCain called it "the worst example of the influence of special-interest groups I have ever seen."

But at least they did something about that ridiculous tax break for buying Hummers. It's now just a quarter of what it was.
After months of wrangling, lawmakers also restricted the "Hummer tax break," which gave small-business owners as well as many doctors and lawyers the ability to write off up to $100,000 of the purchase price of sport utility vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds. The new provision would limit most first-year write-offs to $25,000, raising $372 million over the next three years.
Only write off $25,000? Horrific. Those poor people who want to get Hummers for free, how will they bear it?

The New York Times article includes some of the buy-offs they gave Democrats.