With all the hype this election year about how “pork barrel spending is out” and “a new age of reform and doing business” is in for government, it sure didn’t take long for Washington to revert back to old habits. In fact, the election hasn’t even been held yet, and both presidential hopefuls have helped to repudiate their promises to reform government.

If none of this makes sense, maybe it’s because you haven’t yet heard of the huge pork barrel spending that went into yesterday’s bailout deal. In one of the largest economic crisis’s this country has seen in decades, our venerable senators passed a $700 billion bailout package that included more than $1.7 billion worth of targeted tax breaks.

Of course, how will these tax breaks help you and me, average American workers, small businesses and individuals? Well unless you produce wooden arrows, make rum, produce small to medium-sized films, or own a company that works in the Samoas, not at all.

Here’s the breakdown of the bailout’s pork:

Oh but here’s the best one. If you are an Alaskan fisherman you’ll love this. Alaska’s Republican Representative Dan Young stymied the House’s bill on Monday and was able to obtain in Wednesday’s bill “a $223 million package of tax benefits for fishermen and others whose livelihoods suffered as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.”

Wow, if only I had known just how powerful NOT cooperating during a national crisis could be I could have called my representative, Stephanie Herseth (D), and asked for the “Online Business Woman’s emerging and ever so potential business grant for small women-owned businesses living in small no-one-can-find-it-on-a-map states”. I think I could have gotten AT LEAST $10 million out of that. What do you think?

Should Congress vote in millions of dollars worth of pork during the worst economic crisis we’ve seen in decades?