Saving Your Country with Chicken Crap

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say that there are times when your government faces a crisis and opts to stick its collective head straight up its collective partisan ass rather than deal with the situation in a mature and reasonable way. Democrats and Republicans agree more often than not on what’s best for the country – it’s considerably less common for them to agree on how to get there and increasingly more common for both parties to be dead wrong. This happened this past week when the 107th Congress tried to come to terms on an economic stimulus package.

Everyone knows that despite all the bandying about how resilient our country is, we took a massive economic hit on September 11. Hundreds of thousands of people are out of work, many others are being forced to take pay cuts, and many industries have been crippled, some irreparably. Congress isn’t entirely oblivious to the needs of its constituents, so it went to work on a plan to reinvigorate the economy. Congressional leaders knew what had to be done: the plan needed to give aid to unemployed workers, especially in New York City, extend health care for those who have been laid off, and offer tax rebate checks to those that didn’t get them last time. (Although it’s fairly obvious that that idea didn’t work last time. The philosophy of the government in times of crisis seems to be “why fail miserably at something once when you can do it several times to prove it wasn’t a fluke?”) But with the budget broken and the economy slowly being flushed down the toilet, getting Congress to pass a bill with only these simple measures was about as likely as getting Steven Cojocaru to promote Farah slacks. They smelled opportunity and were on it faster than Bin Laden on a camel’s cornhole. If there was ever really such a thing as a "lockbox," the attacks of September 11 shattered it just as effectively as they did the World Trade Center.

Those of you unfamiliar with governmental jargon may not know the term “pork-barrel.” It refers to any project or appropriation that grants money solely to a Congressman’s district or a Senator’s state. For example, if Ted Kennedy proposed a $2,000,000 appropriation for saloon repair in Hyannisport, it would be considered pork-barrel. (Note: Ted Kennedy would never do such a shoddy and lowbrow thing. He’d go for $3 million.)

What happened to the stimulus was this: Congress realized that “economic stimulus” has a wonderfully positive ring to it. No constituent would ever have a problem with a Member of Congress voting for “economic stimulus.” Therefore Congress, with the help of a bunch of lobbyists, put in the essentials and then just kept on going, adding any number of bizarre provisions that would help out their respective states, but not even come close to stimulating the economy. For example, the House version of the bill included a provision that would reduce taxes on corporations' overseas investment income. If you’re an economist, perhaps you can tell me how encouraging companies to invest money overseas is supposed to help the American economy. They also removed a tax provision that originally provided grants to companies for hiring people on welfare. Now those companies get the same bonus for hiring anyone. Not to wax too Democratic, but if your goal is to help those most in need, maybe you shouldn't give bonuses to companies for doing just the opposite.

Oh, but it gets so much better. The Senate got a hold of the bill and promptly began putting in such economy boosting measures as money for fruit growers to prevent citrus tree cankers. Here I thought the problem was a plummeting job market and no consumer confidence, and all along it’s been bad oranges. God bless the government for pointing these things out to me.

It’s also comforting to know that the millions of buffalo farmers in the country will get some help. The bill calls for as much as $10 million to go to bison farmers, and much of that money will go to the North American Bison Cooperative, the largest group of producers in the country. Ted Turner is a member of NABC – I don’t know about you, but the thought of Teddy losing Jane Fonda AND his buffalo farm was keeping me up nights. The best part is the bill directs the government to spend $220 million on commodities, which will then be redistributed. Some of the commodities will be used for school lunches - including all that delicious buffalo meat. And you thought your children complained about cafeteria food now.

The stimulus package includes a tax break on aviation fuel for crop-dusters. Only they don’t make it sound like that; they call it the “Clarification of Excise Tax Exemptions For Agricultural Aerial Applicators.” The section even says, “gasoline shall be treated as used for farming purposes.” I’ve never tried farming with gasoline, but my grandfather did once. You could see the ball of flame from six counties over. The funny thing is the anthrax scare has made everyone so petrified of crop-dusters that drunken hicks are liable to open fire on them and blow the planes and all their tax-free fuel right out of the sky.

And the bill goes on and on for 240 pages. I’ll need the economists’ help again to explain how an out-of-work mother of two is going to benefit from an atomic history museum in Las Vegas. You can also fill me in on how a struggling family will find relief from a study of erosion on Hawaii's Waikiki Beach. Both projects are authorized in the bill. Perhaps the best clause calls for money and tax breaks for producing electricity from chicken waste. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any chicken crap hanging around, so I guess I’m S.O.L. on that one. I should have lobbied for a similar dog-waste provision, there's no shortage of that at my place.

The bill calls for a tax credit to equip rural communities with broadband internet service. Folks, I live in Washington, DC, and I don’t get broadband internet service. And how are folks in rural communities supposed to pay for broadband if they’re out of work? With chicken shit?

It’s really much ado about nothing, considering Congress reached an impasse and decided to shelve the whole thing. So instead of getting a reasonable tax cut, COBRA payments for the recently unemployed, or at the very least some help for victims and businesses in New York, those who have lost their jobs or businesses because of the September 11 attacks get nothing. Oh wait - federalized airport security. That should help. And the Senate Agriculture Committee just approved a $73.5 billion dollar farm bill (don’t get me started on THAT subject), so hopefully those citrus growers and buffalo farmers will get the help they desperately need. Happy Thanksgiving.