End Corporate Welfare Apply the 'welfare mother' image where it belongs
by Freethinker Bob
"Another example is the Savings and Loan industry bailout of the 1980s and early 1990s, which cost taxpayers almost $500 billion. This came in addition to the governmental giveaway of the rights to broadcast the new medium of digital cable, on the public-owned airwaves, in 1996 a commodity worth $70 billion dollars and owned by the public, given away to big business free-of-charge."
Americans Should Stop Paying Corporate Welfare
Since California's Proposition 13 "tax revolt" of 1978, and, in more recent times, the 1994 Gingrich-instigated "Contract on America," the idea of social welfare has taken on an a rather undeserved, petty, and twisted connotation.
This connotation usually evokes imagery, in the collective American conscious, of a woman (typically of color) with a gaggle of children about her feet, milking the state and its lot of hard-working taxpayers out of loads of undeserved money.
Rarely, if ever, does this distorted imagery give credence to the realities of modern day governmental welfare abuse, often perpetrated by those who the majority of Americans would almost certainly agree need little if any financial support and backing from their federal, state and local governments.
Corporate welfare comes in the form of vast subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes, debt forgiveness and various other benefits for big business. It remains a sweet financial plum for corporations that, not surprisingly, also give direct lead to political influence and corruption, and deafens the obvious need for campaign and political reform.
When it comes to tax breaks and loopholes and political corruption, corporations have managed to effectively throw their lobbying weight around in order to originate and advance a slew of pro-corporate Internal Revenue Service policies that, for all intents and purposes, leave the individual American taxpayers in their financial dust.
According to Ralph Nader’s most recent book, "Cutting Corporate Welfare," a sly example of this came in 1997 when then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and fellow Republican (and current U.S. Senator) Trent Lott included a tax break in a 1997 tax bill which provided benefits for several corporations, including Amway and its co-founder Richard DeVos. This came several months after DeVos and his wife gave a $1 million soft money contribution to the Republican National Committee. The corporate tax break will cost the public some $19 million in lost revenue, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Despite such examples, the media continues to forget that public sector needs are continually being slashed at the expense of private sector profiteering, courtesy of taxpayer funding.
Another example is the Savings and Loan industry bailout of the 1980s and early 1990s, which cost taxpayers almost $500 billion. This came in addition to the governmental giveaway of the rights to broadcast the new medium of digital cable, on the public-owned airwaves, in 1996 a commodity worth $70 billion dollars and owned by the public, given away to big business free-of-charge.
These backroom-style wheeling-and-dealings of corporate welfare are nothing new, however. One can trace such slick governmental perks for corporations back to the 1872 Mining Act that, to this day, allows mining companies to stake a claim in federal lands for a mere $5 per acre, and then permits the taking and selling of any valuable minerals (such as gold and silver) without having to pay public royalties for their actual worth. Is it really any wonder why this continues today, virtually unabated?
Even in local governments the push and pull of corporate-friendly expenditure, at the public’s expense, remains continuous, as exemplified by such risky ventures such as building private enterprise sports venues, with full or partial public funding.
When taking it all in, it is simply perplexing that several years ago when President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress drafted their welfare reform bill, the resounding pledge was to "End welfare as we know it." Their real intention, as well now see, was to gut welfare for the poor, while continuing to advance it for the concerns of big business at the expense of social neediness and the public interest.
And while the reality of corporations unnecessarily receiving, using and abusing governmental welfare in the form of tax breaks, loopholes, subsidies and bailouts has yet to seemingly impact the American consciousness in the way the overblown and exaggerated image that a "welfare mother" has, it will be truly interesting to witness whether this accepting attitude toward corporate welfare will persist after the blatant corporatism of the Bush administration.
