Manufacturing firms today are celebrating the House’s approval of what the National Association of Manufacturers is calling “a jobs-creating, tax-cutting, competitiveness-enhancing package” of tariff suspensions on hundreds of raw materials and other inputs to industrial processes. The bill is a regular in Congress and usually goes by the name of the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, though this year Democrats (in pro-business mode) have given it a snazzier moniker: the Manufacturing Enhancement Act.

It’s usually a bipartisan shoo-through, but this year there was some doubt that the legislation would pass after House Republicans objected that it contained provisions that violated their moratorium on earmarks.

Republican opposition crumbled yesterday, but I was curious as to what those earmarks might be. The full text of the legislation can be downloaded (in pdf form) here by anyone with the courage to do so. I warn you, though, that it contains a huge list of mysterious substances like Epilink 701, Cetalox, and 1,3-Dimethyl-1H-pyrazol-5-ol.

I don’t know which items the Republicans have identified as earmarks, but here are a few that definitely look suspicious:

• Certain reusable grocery bags;

• Certain pressure distillation columns;

• Certain imaging colorants of fast yellow, cyan, fast black, and magenta;

• Liberty, Rely, and Ignite herbicides;

• Over-the-range microwaves;

• Certain laundry work surfaces;

• Yarn of carded camel hair; and — my favorite —

• Yarn of carded hair of Kashmir (cashmere) goats, of yarn count less than 19.35 metric, not put up for retail sale. ###