President Bush finally signed the much-needed NASCAR tax-break bill into law today. I guess it also has something to do with banks and stuff, but who cares about that crap? It’s all about left turns!

Since pork spending is a bad thing these days, Congress decided that pork tax-cutting is a better idea. Somehow, that means that NASCAR was extended the courtesy of writing off the costs of their facilities over seven years instead of the standard 15. I don’t really know what that means, but it reportedly means a short-term tax savings of about $100 million.

MCCLATCHY’s Lisa Zagaroli actually makes it seem as if the break isn’t that egregious (via the MIAMI HERALD):

The Senate-passed bill includes an array of so-called “tax extenders.” One extends for two years a tax policy that had been allowed to expire in December that lets motor-sports facilities be treated the same as amusement parks and other entertainment complexes for tax purposes.

But it’s still odd that in the time of supposed national crisis that such things were deemed important enough to include in this bill. The provision was introduced by a Democrat lawmaker in California and supported bi-partisanly in North Carolina.

Another odd provision in the bill is based around American’s other pasttime — archery. Andrew Zajac of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE gives arrowheads the good news:

Wooden Practice Arrow Tax Exemption. Early reports portrayed this like a low-budget Bridge-to-Nowhere boondoggle. But Archery Trade Association president Jay McAninch said the provision corrects an error in a 2004 bill that slapped a 43 cent per arrow tax on children’s wood and fiberglass arrows retailing for about $1 apiece. The tax was intended to apply only to hunting and competition arrows typically costing between $8 and $15 each. Lifting the tax on kids’ arrows will cost the treasury $2 million, McAninch said.

Watchdog groups are unimpressed by the whole debacle:

“Unfortunately, it took a legitimately historic piece of legislation that lawmakers on principle could vote for or against it, and they just loaded it up with business as usual, a huge tax package not related at all to the bailout, and crammed it over to the House,” said Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

And here I thought the government was just going to tuck a $700 billion check into a “sorry for your loss” greeting card and mail it off to Wall Street.