Faced with what had become a must-pass piece of legislation to bail out the nation's struggling financial systems last week, Congress reacted in an all-too-familiar way.

"Well," you could almost hear the senators wheeze, "If it must pass, then let's sweeten it up a little bit just to make sure there are enough votes over there in the House."

It's hard to believe that a bill loaded with $700 billion to stem the nation's credit crunch and stop financial markets from spinning out of control needed any "sweeteners" to attract votes or that it needed to get any bigger.

But sweeten it up they did. When the new financial bailout bill left the senators' hands it was larded up with a vast array of new goodies - tax break plums for renewable energy such as solar, wind and biomass, including incentives to help businesses encourage workers to ride bikes to work; a one-year fix to shield 20 million middle Americans from the unintended snare of the Alternate Minimum Tax (yes, we have advocated for that on its merits); a tax credit for refineries that convert oil shale and coal into transportation fuels, and on and on.

Giddy with its opportunity to tack on things that hadn't been able to get off the ground on their own merits in many cases, the Senate quickly emptied its closet of unfinished promises and doled out $2 million in tax breaks for manufacturers of wooden arrows for children; $148 million in tax relief for the wool industry, $192 million in excise tax rebates for rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; $100 million in tax benefits for racetrack owners, assistance for movie producers; and tax benefits for fishermen and others who sued over the Exxon Valdez spill.

When the Senate had finished putting plums on this grand new tree of legislation, it had also bumped the price tag up by another $112 billion. The prettied up bill soon swept through the House and was signed into law.

To be sure there were some things in this package that deserved to pass - the hold-harmless on the AMT, for instance. That could have been done on the merits of the bill.

The fact that Congress is so enmeshed in its pork-barrel mentality that it immediately turned to the larder instead of dealing straightforwardly with its business at hand - rescuing the nation's financial system - is an outrage.

Even worse is the fact that it provided no revenue offset for the baubles and trinkets the Congress added to this legislation. The $112 billion will not be trimmed by additional spending cuts or closing of tax loopholes to pay for these extras, the Senate just put them on the nation's charge card. Small wonder we end up in such dire fixes.

The bailout bill was tough enough for Main Street to swallow, but the addition of special interest pork made it even more unpalatable.