The Swine Line

You bet they do.  The question is not whether you can find out about it, the question is whether you can STOP it? 

Read this post by David Freddoso in the National Review Online about a huge bond issue included in this year’s hideous Farm Bill.  This program of federally funded tax-credit bonds for forest purchases is tailored so that taxpayers will end up subsidizing one, single gazillionzaire timber company and a gazillionaire environmental group, The Nature Conservancy.  Unbelievable.  A few excerpts from David’s post:

Only one parcel of land in the entire United States meets the criteria set for the Qualified Forestry Bonds program. You see, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved exactly one “Native Fish Habitat Conservation Plan,” covering a 1.6-million-acre parcel that reaches from western Montana into eastern Washington State. And that parcel is owned by the Plum Creek Timber Company, the single largest private landowner in the United States….

In 1999, Plum Creek became a Real Estate Investment Trust, and began unloading its land holdings for high-end residential and recreational use. Today, with the real-estate and timber markets flat, Plum Creek has been looking to sell larger tracts of timberland to large institutional investors. The farm bill’s Qualified Forestry Bonds provision could provide up to $500 million to help sweeten such deals.

And here is what the Republican Study Committee has to add to the story:

The Plum Creek Timber Company is attempting to sell the land to the “Nature Conservancy” – which the Washington Post exposed as the “world’s richest environmental group, amassing $3 billion in assets.” The earmark would allow the Nature Conservancy to claim a $250 million “tax refund,” providing incentive for the group to purchase the land from Plum Creek. The tax refund would be provided even though the Nature Conservancy is a non-profit group that does not pay taxes.

According to the FEC website, employees of Plum Creek Timber have donated nearly $17,000 to Senator Baucus’ war chest during this election cycle alone. Senator Baucus not only included “Baucus Bonds” in the Farm Bill, he also put them in last year’s energy bill – despite the fact that this special interest earmark would have nothing to do with agriculture or energy. The “Baucus Bonds” would provide $250 million in taxpayer funds to help provide incentive for the richest environmental group in the world to buy land from donors of Senator Baucus.

Congressional tax bills have become very attractive vehicles for members of Congress who want to fund pet projects.  The tax code is so complex, so mind-numbingly difficult to understand, most people’s eyes simply glaze over when you try to explain some of these exotic and convoluted plans.  It is a perfect way to earmark on the sly. 

CAGW just named Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) May’s Porker of the Month for trying to obtain an earmark for a $6 billion high-speed rail line for Manhattan by using the tax code in unprecedented ways.