Motherfuckers. They sandwiched the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 in with the fucking bailout bill. I really want it to pass, but I am really NOT supportive of the bailout.

Ugh. They have no shame.

I don't understand how they can even do that.

It shouldn't be allowed.

I love how they were all, this bailout needs to pass, let's make it clean. And then we find out that there are all these add-ons dangling off of it. Is it possible to just get them passed one at a time on their individual merits?

@Tiff, mizzchelle: It's sad, really. The entire idea now is to roll so many "good" things into the bailout that saying no to it would be like saying no to economy AND a cure for cancer. That's the way they're trying to pressure everyone into it this time knowing they were only a dozen votes away last time.

Personally, unless I see real NUMBERS on how much of the $700B is going to each cause/fund/etc. I'm going to assume they're all listed as "unspecified amount" aka. we're being lied to to the tune of 700 billion dollars.

what people should be up in arms about are riders like these:

"Creation of a seven-year cost recovery period for construction of a motorsports racetrack: Track owners currently follow a seven-year depreciation schedule and write each year's depreciation off their taxes. The IRS wanted to increase the depreciation timetable to 15 years, which would mean the track owner's depreciation would be cut in half. The measure in the keeps the seven-year depreciation schedule for two years and would cost taxpayers $100 million."

and

"Provisions related to film and television productions: In order to keep movie production in the U.S., production companies would be allowed to deduct the cost of producing the films from their taxes. Rep. Diane Watson, D-California, has been one of the program's biggest supporters. The measure would cost taxpayers $478 million over 10 years."

I lot of people held their nose while voting for the bailout. The problem is that the economy is at grave risk of losing $30 TRILLION very quickly and causing a global depression. Of the $700 billion, we're expected to get about 80% of it back. The only way we lose most of it is if the bailout doesn't work and the economy collapses anyway. It's theoretically possible we could actually make money if the economy recovers faster than expected, but most of the provisions that would have allowed that were stripped out.

The reason this bill was negotiated at gunpoint is because the executive branch sat on their information and their plans until there was enough panic that they thought they could shove it down everyone's throats. To some degree, they succeeded.