I've browsed the bill and I'm really not very impressed. First, it is a whopping 451 pages long. It starts with the rationale behind the bill (pending economic disaster) and then goes into the provisions of the bailout. Pretty dull stuff to be honest. Then on Page 97, I found this little gem:

18 SEC. 204. EMERGENCY TREATMENT.
19      All provisions of this Act are designated as an emer-
20 gency requirement and necessary to meet emergency needs
21 pursuant to section 204(a) of S. Con. Res 21 (110th Con-
22 gress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal
23 year 2008 and rescissions of any amounts provided in this
24 Act shall not be counted for purposes of budget enforce-
25 ment.

This tells me two things. First, the spending in this bill comes from this year but doesn't count against this year's budget. The other thing is that this should indicate that everything in this bill is a critical measure that will help deal with this financial crisis. Thus, the bill should be very lean and non-related items should have been left out, at least according to Section 204, right?

Wrong.

It looks like the vast majority of the bill consists of a laundry lists of special new or increased tax breaks for certain groups (as well as a few negative tax breaks for others). A section which addresses a plethora of energy related tax breaks ends with the following (Page 179):

12 SEC. 117. CARBON AUDIT OF THE TAX CODE.
13      (a) STUDY.—The Secretary of the Treasury shall
14 enter into an agreement with the National Academy of
15 Sciences to undertake a comprehensive review of the Inter-
16 nal Revenue Code of 1986 to identify the types of and
17 specific tax provisions that have the largest effects on car-
18 bon and other greenhouse gas emissions and to estimate
19 the magnitude of those effects.
20      (b) REPORT.—Not later than 2 years after the date
21 of enactment of this Act, the National Academy of
22 Sciences shall submit to Congress a report containing the
23 results of study authorized under this section.
24      (c) AUTHORIZATION    OF     APPROPRIATIONS.—There is
25 authorized to be appropriated to carry out this section
26 $1,500,000 for the period of fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

So, in an effort to solve the emergency financial crisis, Congress has decided it was prudent to spend 1.5 million dollars examining the tax code in an effort to find a way to tweak it to prevent global warming. It is unfortunate that it would cost so much to simply review the existing tax code, but it does since the code is overly complicated (and no thanks to Congress for that). Of course, this number doesn't count toward this year's budget, so it is actually a free accounting - or at least free from budgetary review. All in the name of global warming impending financial doom.

More to come, if my blood pressure can handle further examination of this bill. (You know why it is called a bill, right? Because you and I will be paying for it for decades.)