520 Breaks for Select Companies Added to Tax Bill

[cal04]

A huge tax bill that Congress passed last week contained a little-noticed gift for select corporations -- tens of millions of dollars in breaks on import tariffs.

Early Saturday morning, in the frantic final hours of the 109th Congress, lawmakers rolled 520 tariff suspensions into the must-pass bill. The provisions will reduce or eliminate taxes on imported products as varied as shoes, camcorders and boiled oysters.

While such suspensions have been around for decades, the flurry of provisions pushed this Congress to a record of nearly 800 for the year. Corporate lobbyists often craft such suspensions to apply to just one product imported by just one company. Many of those companies and their executives have given millions of dollars to political campaigns.

This week, leaders from both parties called for changes in the system.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/13/AR2006121301850.html

[DRoseDARs]

1. One last little bit of pork before the Repiglicans are slaughtered. n/t

[Quantess]

4. The R mascot should be changed to a pig.

Pretty shameless.

[Kagemusha]

2. Select companies implies an unconstitutional bill

This isn't exempting companies by name, it's the attack of the one-armed senior citizen male with a limp. Or however that line goes.

[stillcool]

3. they want to 'change the system'...

after they've broken in, partied hardy.. and given away everything not nailed down. Bush's constituents..the haves..and the now have way much mores...plutocracy at it's finest.