Welfare in 2006

Well now I am going to stand on my Soapbox once again and put it out there where I can not retrieve it. We need to reform Welfare in the US. If you ask me we need to get rid of it all together. This country is up to its Hair Follicles in corruption and bad financial planning. So lets just cut the FAT.

So now that I have your attention the Welfare program that I am referring to is the Corporate Welfare Program. This program has been in use for a while now going back to Reagan's Error. For the many that do not know what this is or have never heard of it let me help you out.

Corporate welfare is the program in which the government gives money to large companies (mainly) in order to help them along. As a result, by some estimates corporate welfare spending exceeds $100 billion annually. And this doesn't even include narrowly-targeted tax breaks for specific companies and industries; nor does it include regulatory regimes that are devised to protect certain companies while driving their competitors out of business. The total cost of corporate welfare to American taxpayers and to the U.S. economy is immense.

Now lets keep in mind that the government has cut funding for Education, Veterans, and Health care all in the pretense of helping our economy. Yet we still pay out these exorbitant amounts of money for large corporations who are already bringing in huge gains. Once again the people are kept in the dark and the rich continue to get richer. Just think of this if we took 25% of the current expenditures and put it towards education Just think of how many more children from the lower and middle class families could attend college. But wait there would still be money left over to put back into health care in order to help the elder afford the medications they need. The amount of money that we waste on the things that matter is incredible.

Below I've provided an illustrative list of corporate welfare programs in the federal budget. Decide for yourselves whether any of these things sound like something a small-government conservative should support. I think every one of these programs presents a juicy target for conservatives to attack. But understand that this list is just the tip of the iceberg:

· The Advanced Technology Program -- which provides grants to corporations to help convert basic research into marketable products -- costs taxpayers $140 million annually. As reported by the Heritage Foundation, about 20% of these subsidies go to five of the largest corporations in the world: IBM, GE, GM, 3M, and Motorola.

· The International Trade Administration -- which pays the costs of marketing, advertising and other services for U.S. multinationals operating in foreign markets -- costs the taxpayers over $400 million a year.

· The Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation -- which provide direct subsidies, loan guarantees, and credit insurance to U.S. exporters -- receive a combined annual appropriation of about $200 million. CBO has concluded that the subsidies are either retained by the U.S. company or passed on to the foreign country where the goods are sold.

· The Market Access Program -- which helps agribusiness penetrate foreign markets by paying advertising and other costs -- is estimated to cost $200 million in 2006 alone. About 20% of these subsidies go to promote familiar brand-name foods.

· Export Credit Guarantees -- which extend credit guarantees to foreign importers and banks that purchase U.S. agricultural products -- costs approximately $200 million annually. A GAO report found that the program has little or no effect on income and employment in U.S. agriculture.