Angry Republicans on Capitol Hill yesterday launched an effort to pull nearly $2 billion in pork – including tax breaks for wooden-arrow manufacturing and Puerto Rican rum producers – from the financial-rescue bill.
“I think it’s outrageous that in a time of national emergency these things would be added,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.). “Let’s take out the pork.”
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) said, “This bill was not the place to put pet projects . . . This bill should not have been purchased with pork.”
The pork was sausaged into the $700 billion rescue bill before it was approved Wednesday night by the Senate in an effort to make the legislation more palatable to members of Congress leery of the cost, unpopularity with the public, and intrusion into the stock markets.
But a group of House Republicans were infuriated that the tax breaks, known as “sweeteners,” were included in the bill.
Yesterday afternoon, they asked the House Rules Committee for permission to attempt to add an amendment that would trim the pork and make other changes.
“Some of this junk just shouldn’t be in there,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) before the Rules Committee denied the request.
That “junk” includes $128 million in tax cuts for auto-racing tracks, another $33 million for corporations operating in American Samoa, and $6 million for makers of kids’ wooden arrows.
John McCain told MSNBC that inclusion of the sweeteners in the bill was “insanity and . . . obscenity.”
As GOP members vented, the White House and congressional leaders of both parties tenaciously lobbied House members to vote today in favor of the rescue, with President Bush personally calling some of them. The initial rescue bill failed by a 228-205 vote in the House Monday, sending the stock market crashing.
At least 12 of the House members who voted against the first version need to be flipped to pass the current one.
Several members said they would change their votes to support the bill.