Paper power

The Nation magazine illustrates an example of private sector ingenuity and unintended consequences of government actions. However, their readers probably will not draw the conclusion that maybe we need fewer attempts from the government to micro manage the rest of us.

No one in Congress seems to have anticipated this creative maneuver. This past fall the Joint Committee on Taxation computed the cost of extending the tax credit for three months and projected it would cost a manageable $61 million. It now appears that the extension (which was passed as part of the TARP) could cost as much as $2 billion before the credits expire at the end of this calendar year.

Update: The always entertaining James Taranto has found this article and writes about it in The Great Paper Caper. Government offers subsidy. Company takes it. Left-wing writer suffers crisis of faith.