But we're getting it back, right?

I audibly gasped when the gravity of the following passage slowly sunk in and I began to understand.
My summary first:
I thought: We put up $700 BILLION in TARP bailout funds to help prevent worldwide economic collapse. While I'd rather let it collapse and start anew, its not up to me.
What happened: We gave banks and insurance companies a $700 BILLION credit card with no expiration date on it. Yes, Wall Street can only borrow $700 BILLION at a time!
I thought: But that's ok. Hell, rumor has it these are technically wise investments and the taxpayers will earn a bunch of money to help offset the costs of borrowing from China to loan it out in the middle of an economic crisis.
What happened: The IRS takes the payments as though they are regular general funds.
Instead of taking the money that is given back by the banks and insurance companies and giving it back to the Chinese we borrowed it from, we're spending it as the bureaucracy sees fit, including more bailouts .

To quote Clusterstock as quoted by Marketplace:
You see, returned TARP funds become part of the general revenue of the federal government. The money is treated just like money paid by taxpayers. It simply becomes part of the income of the government that will be spent by politicians and bureaucrats. There’s no lockbox or segregated fund. It works just like Social Security taxes: the income just gets spent for whatever the government decides to spent money on.

Right now about $134.5 billion remains out of the original $700 billion. When Goldman repays the its $10 billion TARP funding, that amount will grow to $144.5 billion.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.