NYTimes: Congress's Embarrassment of Pork

"With all the subtlety of finger-painters, the House produced a masterpiece of bad legislation this week: a study in grease, pork and blubber, to use lawmakers' descriptions of a stunning special-interest bonanza for all manner of American businesses. The blubber — a tax break affecting native Alaskan whalers — was a last-minute inclusion in a bill that began as a simple $5 billion fix for a tariff problem but was transformed into a $143 billion juggernaut of special-interest favors.
The frisson of lobbyists was palpable as goodies were voted for bow-and-arrow makers, dog-track owners, sonar fish-finder makers and scores of other businesses that have nothing to do with the trade issue at hand. That problem — a modest substitute for a tax subsidy for exporters that was ruled illegal by world trade courts — remains uncorrected. So the meter has been running since March as the European Union levies billions of dollars in retaliatory sanctions on a wide range of American products.
The penalties grow each month, yet the outlook is for even more pork-barrel bargaining. The Senate's rival $167 billion business cornucopia awaits a compromise with the House version, and lawmakers estimate that September is their earliest chance to haggle seriously over the final product.
All sense of urgency and proportion has been lost in Congress's frenzy. The House even dared to adopt an unjustifiable payoff of almost $10 billion for tobacco farmers, whose deadly products can no longer be propped up by price supports. One $3.6 billion amendment lets residents of states with no income taxes start deducting their sales and local taxes on federal returns.
The Bush administration has stood by as Congress seized the tariff issue to bend the business tax code out of shape. Clearly, the two houses' dueling Christmas trees should be scrapped in favor of a simple, limited tariff fix. But Congress shows no will to do that as long as there is one more corporate lobbyist to be comforted and campaign coffers beckon."