Adventures at Midlife

After the much-publicized “failure” by the U.S. House of Representatives, who said a great big “NO” to signing the biggest blank check in the nation’s history, the U.S. Senate is currently pig-wrasslin’ the bailout bill, with the usual results.

According to David Rogers at Politico:

With each permutation, the bill has steadily grown in size. Treasury’s initial plan was about three pages long. The House version, which failed, stretched to 110. The Senate substitute now runs over 450 pages. And tucked away in the tax provisions is a landmark health care provision demanding that insurance companies provide coverage for mental health treatment—such as hospitalization—on parity with physical illnesses.

The cost of this little health care addition to the bill: $3.8 billion over five years. (Mere pocket change!)

Hel-lo? I’m all for getting health coverage to those who need it, but I think this smells. What else are they tucking away in the folds and creases of this particular bit of legislation? Aren’t earmarks and pork barrel spending and half-baked legislation the very reasons why the American economy in this particularly pretty pickle?

Here’s how it all will trickle down in 2009, says Rogers, if the Senate’s bill passes:

The biggest single piece in the package is an extension of protections for millions of middle class families who would otherwise find themselves exposed to the higher levy under the alternative minimum tax. This alone accounts for about three quarters of the cost or $78.8 billion in 2009. Almost $14 billion more can be attributed to a variety of tax break extensions important to business, including the R&E credit worth about $8.4 billion in 2009.

The rural school aid is smaller —about $3.3 billion over the next five years— but has great importance for many Western communities and could be important then in the House.

Excuse me? How did we get from mortgage bailouts to “rural school aid”? And why aren’t our esteemed senators finding more ways to offset the costs to us middle-class taxpayers? Are they listening?

Clearly, I don’t understand anything, particularly when it comes to politics. According to the NYTimes, these very pieces of legislation that make me uncomfortable are what will drag House Republications back to the table:

In the end, Senate leaders decided to overcome some of the ideological and political resistance to the measure by adding provisions that make it hard for many lawmakers to vote against…

Brendan Daly, communications director for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said Democrats anticipated that the addition of the tax breaks, a long-sought measure expanding mental health insurance and lesser-known elements like aid for rural schools would get the bill passed.

There were initial indications from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who had opposed the bill Monday that they were now giving it a second look and were willing to change their views.

And it is going to hurt:

[T]he new items also increase the burden on future taxpayers. The $151 billion in tax breaks, which offer incentives for the use of renewable energy and relieve 24 million households from an estimated $65 billion alternative-minimum tax scheduled to take effect this year, are offset by only $44 billion in tax increases and spending cuts elsewhere.

Moreover, the increase in federal deposit insurance will not be financed, as the insurance program now is, by assessing a higher fee on the banks that benefit. Instead, banks will get an open-ended line of credit directly to the Treasury Department — meaning, taxpayers — that must be repaid by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation but not until at least 2010, when the temporary expansion ends.

Wow. An “open-ended” line of credit to the very banks that brought us to the brink of disaster, all cheerfully financed by us. I can’t wait to see the fancy wrapping paper and bows they’ll use to wrap up this pile of pig manure.