I don't have a link to the article as this was e-mailed to me in plain text, but thought I would pass it along to all of you out there.

Commentary by Ann Woolner
Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- It is one thing to re-pitch the Wall Street bailout bill to encourage finger-in-the-wind elected lawmakers to enact it.

Forget Wall Street. Let's call it the Main Street Rescue Act of 2008. Or better yet, how about the Save the World from Total Economic Collapse Act.

At the same time, lawmakers have been busy making the package sweeter for those who balked at such a huge transfer of money and power.

And so, at the moment the House today votes on whether to pass it, it will also vote on a 39 cent per item tax break for the makers of wooden arrows for children.

Likewise, to save the entire world from economic collapse, the House will have to extend a tax break for race car tracks and for Hollywood film makers shooting in the U.S. It will require some health insurance plans to put mental health coverage on par with physical health and bar them from discriminating on the basis of genetic information.

It will give tax breaks for renewable energy stuff and spare Americans from $62 billion in alternative minimum taxes.

But, what about saving the world? Oh yeah, that. It lets the Treasury secretary spend up to $700 billion to buy securities no one else wants. And bank deposits will be insured up to $250,000.

See what happens when you rush Congress to pass something the country absolutely, positively must get as soon as humanly possible to save us from Armageddon?

While some of us bite nails and cross fingers (not easy to accomplish at once), in fear that our financial well-being hangs in the balance, lawmakers see opportunity.

Gotta Pass It

First, Republicans wanting to extend tax breaks without meeting Democrats' demand to pay for them get to affix their bill to the must-have, gotta-pass bailout bill. That was done to coax a dozen more House Republicans into the fold, while hoping not to scare off Democrats.

And because the Senate couldn't under law act on the rescue bill in the wake of the house flubbing it, lawmakers needed a bill that had been knocking around as a vehicle for it. Voila! Improved mental health coverage!

And rolled up into the package were special gifts to certain constituencies. These breaks won't help save the world from total economic collapse. But because Congress must save said world, what better way to get these things enacted than to stick them into the bailout bill?

Don't get me wrong. The House needs to pass this monstrosity, which now runs 451 pages. If it had passed the more slender, focused version on Monday, a quarter that size, it wouldn't have this big, fat, sloppy bill now.

Taxing Arrows

And hey, I'm not necessarily opposed to lifting the excise tax on children's arrows. That tax was meant to apply only to big, expensive arrows adults use. A 39 cent tax on the kids' version doubles the sales price.

The point is that it's something that Oregon's two senators, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden, have been working on for years, at the urging of Rose City Archery in Oregon. Wyden's office says the exemption wound up in the tax package that wound up in the bailout bill, unbeknownst to Wyden, who didn't vote for the bailout, anyhow.

Smith's office didn't return my call, but the very fact that one of the two senators pushing that tax break didn't even know it was in the rescue package shows how slapdash is the effort to save the entire world from economic collapse.

The bill now contains some $149 billion in tax breaks, glommed onto the $700 billion bail. . . er, rescue plan.

And under House rules on this bill, it's all or nothing. I say go for it. We've got to save the world, don't we? And did I mention the break for rum makers?

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)