Silly me. What was I thinking when I said a bailout would be a joke? Surely I knew that the government would ride to the rescue of the American people with nary a thought for their own pork barrels and political biases.
Here's the latest. It took one week for this bailout bill to grow from 3 pages to 450. Why all the extra ink? Well, you need more space to pen stuff like this. From Politico:
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.
Really a bill onto itself, the mental health parity measure has been a bipartisan priority for top lawmakers in both chambers but has stalled because of disagreements again over how to pay for its estimated $3.8 billion five-year cost. In the current climate, that seems to be no longer a stumbling block, and if the Treasury plan becomes law, it will also.
Got that? When you whip up a climate of crisis, you can knock so many stumbling blocks out of the way. A little sky-is-falling talk paves the way for passing legislation on any pokers you've got in the fire.
Need a law on Wall Street corruption and bad loans? No problem. But you're going to get a health care law to go with it, at a cost of $3.8 billion. The lesson is clear: if you're having a hard time finding tax money to pay for a pet project, wait for the next "catastrophe" and hide your project on page 257.
The public won't care. Hell, they won't even notice. Once you frighten them into submission and tell them the clock is ticking, they won't bother going through 450 pages to root out the garbage. At least, you'd better hope not.
Ever wonder why politicians love the word "crisis?" It means "opportunity."
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