The bailout bill passed this week by the U.S. Senate was not only helpful to those holding troubled mortgage-backed securities and related investments. It was also a great boon for wool researchers and makers of wooden arrows for use by children, rum producers in Puerto Rico, and auto racers, among others.
It is no coincidence that the Senate passed its economic bailout bill in a package containing unrelated legislation and special-interest tax breaks. This is an important lesson about how Washington works that is seldom mentioned in the debate over “earmarks,” if these tax provisions can be called that. For in addition to the common objections to earmarks — the wasteful nature of many of them, and the climate of disrespect for taxpayers that they create — it is also important to remember that earmarks grease the skids for bad or unpopular legislation.
“They’re trying to buy off members,” says conservative Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R., Minn.), who spoke to me on Thursday afternoon, ahead of the House’s expected Friday vote. “I think this sort of thing leads to cynicism on the part of the public. It demonstrates the crassness of Washington, the out-and-out vote-buying that happens when leadership feels a bill has to pass. It’s a bit troubling to think that someone would throw out the concept of free markets for the sake of wooden arrows.”
Some conservatives, as fans of lower taxes, prefer that the special tax-credit provisions — such as the benefit this bill confers upon wooden-arrow-makers — not be called “earmarks.” “Calling tax cuts ‘earmarks’ is very unhelpful and completely wrong from a fiscal conservative perspective,” reads a memo from Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform. “There is no such thing as a ‘tax earmark.’ ”
Indeed, narrow, targeted tax cuts are not the same as handouts of federal money. But if they are not “earmarks,” the tax advantages for wooden arrows and other special interests are still pernicious. At best, they are an attempt by the federal government to manipulate people’s behavior through the tax code. At worst, they are a successful attempt by various special interests to feather their nests by attaching tax wish-lists to must-pass legislation.
In addition to the special tax breaks, the Senate paired the bailout bill with legislation on “mental health parity” and a patch of the Alternative Minimum Tax, so that legislators who vote against it will also be subject to attacks that they opposed those two popular measures ahead of next month’s election.
For lawmakers not enticed by the carrots of special-interest earmarks and tax breaks, there was still the stick that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President Bush have brandished since first demanding this bailout some two weeks ago. The prospect of credit markets seizing up has frightened lawmakers, so that even Tom Coburn, the bomb-throwing, anti-earmark junior senator from Oklahoma, voted for it. Even as he did so, Coburn said he did so reluctantly and added that the bill would not solve the underlying cause of the problem — the domination of the secondary mortgage market by government through the involvement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“We have a patient with cancer,” said Coburn. “They have a secondary pneumonia because of the cancer. We are going to treat the pneumonia, but we are not going to fix the cancer.”
Bachmann, who voted against the bailout in the House on Monday, expressed the same criticism of the bill as Coburn. “We still haven’t reformed Fannie and Freddie or replaced the Community Reinvestment Act,” she said, referring to the 1977 law that first put pressure on banks to make riskier loans in the name of ending racial discrimination in lending. “Absent reform, I don’t know how Congress in good conscience can pass this bill.”
As far as the bailout portion of the legislation goes, the Senate bill does not contain many dramatic improvements over the version that failed in the House this week. The most noteworthy change is an increase in the bank account insurance offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), from $100,000 to $250,000 per account-holder. This is designed to give account-holders greater confidence in the safety of their deposits, so as to prevent bank runs.
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