The bailout is full of pork!

The Senate and the House have passed the bailout bill, and President Bush has signed it into law. It wasn’t just a bailout though. This 400 plus page bill is loaded with pork, some additional spending here, a tax break there, and government regulations. A lot of these add-ons have nothing to do with the bailout at all. The Tax Foundation has compiled a list from the pork-infested bill.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Health insurance companies are now going to be required to include mental health care on parity with care of physical illness. This will increase premiums on every health care plan in America. You get no choice if you want such coverage; they are required to include it in any plan.

Look for more people to drop coverage, and more politicians scream for the dire need of universal healthcare. Of course that is the goal, to make private health insurance unaffordable. Why would they do that? Control. The government gains even more control of you by controlling your access to health care.

Also in this bailout is a tax break for some company that makes a particular type of wooden arrow used by some children somewhere.

A seven-year cost recovery period for motor sports racing track facility… No…I am not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up.

If this is the crisis our politicians keep making it out to be, then why are politicians putting racetrack pork, tax breaks for children’s arrows and mental parity spending into this bill?

Here is a full copy of the bill for your reading enjoyment.