The College Fix

Washington politicians have been bemoaning the perilous state of the federal budget for weeks now, telling us how dangerous the “fiscal cliff” would be to the middle class if they couldn’t reach a deal on the budget. But their concern over our nation’s massive deficit didn’t stop them from them from loading the budget deal with handouts to special interest groups.

Get a load of these pork barrel kickbacks in Tuesday’s budget deal:

• $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.

• $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 to include electric motorbikes.

Seems there’s no such thing as a financial crisis our leaders in Washington wouldn’t take advantage of in order to dole out perks for their favorite industries.

Read the full story at ABC News’s The Note.

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