When the idea of the financial rescue package was proposed two weeks ago, the case was made that Congress needed to act swiftly and decisively.

Why did the Whitehouse and the Treasury Secretary want to push the bill through Congress so fast? Was it because they wanted to avoid oversight, or because the nation was headed for financial doom if a bailout wasn’t passed immediately, or because we couldn’t afford to get bogged down in a partisan fight? Maybe. But there’s another theory that’s been bouncing around in my head lately…

Perhaps they tried to ram the bill through Congress so quickly to prevent it from getting loaded down with wasteful spending. Every bill that makes its way to the floor of the House or Senate is seen as a golden opportunity for the lobbyists who finance Congressional campaigns to add funding for their pet projects. That is, they want us, the taxpayers, to give them our money to help their businesses, even if we won’t directly benefit.

A big spending bill coming up for a vote is like a huge apple pie cooling in the window. Everyone who passes wants to load it up with ice cream and dig in. So perhaps the administration’s haste (giving them the benefit of the doubt) was an attempt to avoid burdening the bill with those additions. If so, it didn’t work.

Look at what eventually happened. The public revolted and the lawmakers used that as justification to vote down the $700 billion bill and delay until a revised version could be written. What did we end up with for all that posturing? The Congress passed a bigger bill… this one with not only the same $700 billion going to Wall Street, but also a $100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners, $192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry, a $33 million tax break to specific corporations on income earned in American Samoa, $148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers, a $49 million tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill, a $478 million tax break for film and TV companies, and my personal favorite, a $2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children.

Just give the special interests enough time and opportunity, and sure enough, they’ll take your tax dollars if they can. It only costs them a relatively small amount in bribes… err, campaign contributions… to get our so-called representatives to divert our tax money to their coffers during one of the most difficult economic times the country has ever faced. Despicable.