The Bailout Bill: What's in it for you?

You want your portion of the Bailout Bill? You got it.

This thing's getting so many extras it's like a loaded baked potato -- sour cream, chives, bacon, you name it. Coming right up.

For Floridians and residents of a handful of other states that don't have state income taxes, there is the extension for the state sales tax deduction. Residents of other states which have state income taxes get to write off their state tax bills. But we don't. A few years ago, Congress made it possible for taxpayers to choose - write off state sales taxes or income taxes. That gave Floridians an extra deduction.

Congress put a time limit on it, however. And the sales tax deduction has already been extended once. So this bill extends it a bit more. Through 2009, from what I hear.

That's nice. But it's also not new. Last week, the Senate approved the same thing.

The Bailout Bill is getting this and so much more. I spotted another tax break for Puerto Rican and Virgin Island rum producers. That's a help, I'm sure, but must we do this now, to get a bailout?

I worry about what all will end up in there.

Comments

We're supposed to trust the fine people that brought us this mess to now be in charge of cleaning up the mess. ...and they wonder why the majority of people are against it.

I'd like some obvious questions addressed, that seem to not be important. Such as who is going to be in charge of determine value and who is going to be in charge of disposing of it? King Paulson????

I'm also glad the bill vaguely states that the SEC can write regulations, well they always could do that, but what is being written immediately into this bill to keep this fiasco from happening again?

I don't trust the politicians, I certainly don't trust Paulson, they created this mess and they should have turned to econimists to fix it. Very few economists favor this plan and why was it the ONLY plan Paulson could offer?

I think we need something to aid liquidity in the credit market, but a total bail out wasn't it. I hope the house still votes no.

Posted by: KCK | October 2, 2008 3:26 PM

This is a sad day in our history and to make it worst I just had a pork chop for dinner. For our mass population as middle or lower income we sure don't seem to have a very loud voice.
VOTE NO!

Posted by: cg | October 2, 2008 8:20 PM

Yep, I guess my brain isn't big enough to understand why a solution to a credit crunch needs to be so convoluted, bailing out the very people that caused it with their stupidity. In my simplistic little brain, it seems like if credit is the main problem, we'd be better off using the $700 billion to create a new bank that will be willing to lend money (and have the interest go back to the American people instead of the ones who got us into this).

Posted by: Tom | October 2, 2008 8:28 PM

correct me if i'm wrong.
if there is 300M people in the US, couldn't they give everyone 3m and still have more than 600B left? with 3m each, who would have any problems anymore? why would they give the money to the very people who caused this.
i thought the bailout was for all the people loosing their houses. pure corruption.

Posted by: AM | October 7, 2008 11:59 AM

I am sorry, but your logic is a little off, if the 700 billion dollars was given to the 300 million people, everybody would get 2333.33 dollars.

Posted by: michael | November 16, 2008 9:10 PM