Short List of Frivolous Costs Passed on to You, the Taxpayer

Here are just some of the frivolous taxpayer expenses funded by Monday night’s congressional bill, opposed by all five Arizona Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives:

• $430 million for Hollywood through "special expensing rules" to encourage TV and film production in the United States. Producers can expense up to $15 million of costs for their projects.
• $331 million for railroads by allowing short-line and regional operators to claim a tax credit up to 50 percent of the cost to maintain tracks that they own or lease.$222 million for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands through returned excise taxes collected by the federal government on rum produced in the islands and imported to the mainland.
• $70 million for NASCAR by extending a "7-year cost recovery period for certain motorsports racing track facilities."
• $59 million for algae growers through tax credits to encourage production of "cellulosic biofuel" at up to $1.01 per gallon.
• $4 million for electric motorcycle makers by expanding an existing green-energy tax credit for buyers of plug-in vehicles toinclude electric motorbikes.

Lawmakers were given just three minutes to read the bill before voting on it. No transparency there.