2013. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006....
- Subsidies – On the other hand, the $15 billion in subsidies contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to the oil, gas, and coal industries would be considered corporate welfare because no goods or services are directly returned to the government in exchange for these expenditures.
Infographic Source: http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1012/subsidize-this/flat.html
Whenever corporate welfare is presented to voters it always sounds like a pretty reasonable, well-intended idea. Politicians say that they’re stimulating the economy or helping struggling industries or creating jobs or funding important research....
However, the largest fraction of corporate welfare spending, about 40%, went through the Department of Agriculture, most of it in the form of farm subsidies. (Edwards, Corporate Welfare, 2003) Well, that sounds OK. Someone’s got to help struggling family farms stay afloat, right? But in reality, farm subsidies actually tilt the cotton field in favor of the largest industrial farming operations. When it comes to deciding how to dole out the money, the agricultural subsidy system utilizes a process that is essentially the opposite of that used in the social welfare system’s welfare system. In the corporate welfare system, the more money and assets you have, the more government assistance you get. Conversely, social welfare programs are set up so that the more money and assets you have, the less government assistance you get. The result is that the absolute largest 7% of corporate farming operations receive 45% of all subsidies. (Edwards, Downsizing the Federal Government, 2004) So instead of protecting family farms, these subsidies actually enhance the ability of large industrial operations to shut them out of the market.
https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-vs-social-welfare/
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8-30-17 The IPS report identifies 92 corporations that reported a profit every year from 2008 to 2015, and that also paid less than 20 percent in corporate income tax. These corporate winners include the usual suspects—banks, defense contractors, telecom firms, and energy companies. Because they were profitable, and paid taxes at or below the Republicans’ optimal rate, they offer an excellent test case. “If claims about the job creation benefits of lower tax rates had any validity,” report author Sarah Anderson writes, “the 92 consistently profitable tax-dodging firms we identified would be among the nation’s strongest job creators.”
But the lower rates didn’t correspond to job creation. Collectively, the 92 profitable corporations cut jobs by 0.74 percent over the period studied, from 2008–16. During that same time, the private sector added jobs at a 6 percent clip. So low-tax corporations did far worse on hiring than their counterparts. https://www.thenation.com/article/corporate-tax-cuts-dont-create-jobs-they-enrich-ceos/
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11-27-17 By the way, when you do the math that statement by Thune implies that a $1.5 trillion tax cut will generate a modest $4.5 trillion of extra GDP. Excuse me if I don’t believe it! These comments are outside the economic mainstream. And they are likely to be contradicted by the JCT estimates – if they were allowed to see the light of day.
What’s this about abuse? After all, Republicans are not necessarily breaking any rules by moving quickly on a tax bill. But it is an abuse of power when the rapid movement is clearly intended to blur the public’s view. It is an abuse of power when there is no pressing need for reckless speed. Is there some national emergency that the tax cuts will solve that justifies not waiting a few extra weeks for the official analysis of the bill’s effects on employment and on deficits? http://www.taxanalysts.org/tax-analysts-blog/waste-fraud-and-abuse-senate-floor/2017/11/27/198636
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11-28-17 The center of the Senate GOP tax plan is a large permanent cut to the tax rate paid by corporations. These would themselves overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, because the vast majority of their benefits would goto shareholders and capital. But Republicans face two challenges. The first is to sell this primarily as a middle-class tax cut, so voters accept it. They do this by front-loading a bunch of preferences for the middle class along with cuts to individual rates across the board. The second challenge is to do this while simultaneously making the case that the plan would not balloon the deficit, to hold on to deficit-hawk senators and because if it raises the deficit in the long term, procedurally it can’t pass by simple majority with only Republican votes. Republicans address this problem by ending all the middle-class preferences and individual rate cuts after 2025.
But the problem is that the second imperative undermines the first. Because the middle-class benefits must be temporary to avoid busting the long-term deficit, analyses have found that in the long run it would shower enormous long-term benefits on the rich while the benefits to the middle class fade away and taxes go up later for many less-fortunate earners. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/11/28/gops-new-scheme-to-save-trumps-tax-plan-reveals-the-scam-at-its-core/?utm_term=.68b3c028dd4c
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