Last year, conservatives led a fight to restructure welfare for the poor, changing the system from a federal handout program to one where recipients are given the means and incentives to help themselves out of poverty and become productive members of society. This year, we are taking the next step to rein in wasteful, counterproductive government spending.
However, instead of facing the prospect of a long, bruising battle with the left, as we did last year over welfare reform, this time conservatives are leading a broad coalition of organizations and activists from across the political spectrum to take aim at a much different, but just as destructive form of government handout - corporate welfare."Corporate welfare" encompasses a broad range of government programs that give taxpayer funds to special interests to help them pad their bottom lines. In fact, Americans for Tax Reform recently compiled a list of more than 70 corporate welfare programs that will spend almost $50 billion in fiscal year 1997 alone.
These programs range in size and scope from a $200,000 program to compensate damaged fishing vessels to $4.23 billion in federal subsidies to big agricultural companies like Dole and Archer Daniels Midland, increasing the cost of food and adding to the profit margins of some of the world's biggest and richest companies.
For example, every year, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Market Access Program (MAP) spend and risk billions of your hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize risky overseas investments and foreign advertising of U.S. products to make it easier for U.S. companies to export their products.
These advertising subsidies and loan guarantees should be borne by the companies that are lucky enough or well connected enough to receive them, not by the U.S. taxpayer, who is forced to help increase the sales of such companies.
While it strives to eliminate these taxpayer subsidies, however, Congress must carefully define "corporate welfare" to include only those programs where the government sends a direct subsidy or payment to a company and receives nothing in return, and not to include tax breaks or tax incentives in that list. For example, although there are a lot of wasteful and redundant federal programs, many which should be eliminated, not all of them fall under the rubric of "corporate welfare spending."
We must beware of those politicians who wish to raise taxes on the American people rather than cut corporate welfare spending. Some politicians claim that by reducing or eliminating some tax preferences, they are targeting corporate welfare.
Tax cuts are not corporate welfare. Government spending is. The government's failure to take your money is not a subsidy. Your income belongs to you, not the government.
Thus, when President Clinton or Sen. Ted Kennedy claim that "rich corporations are not paying their fair share" of taxes, they are not speaking about "corporate welfare" but about tax increases that they want to impose on these companies to help them fund more runaway government spending.
Last year, liberals accused conservatives of trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. However, Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has continued to take the lead in balancing the budget on the backs of those who do not need or deserve federal handouts, getting the government out of the pocket of the taxpayer.
Corporate welfare is just one example of this undeserved largess, but it represents a battle that both left and right can cooperate on to halt the taxpayer subsidizing of businesses.