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Corporate Welfare
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For our purposes, the following references together will serve as our definition of "corporate welfare" and "pork" programs:
- Time Magazine: any action by local, state or federal government that gives a corporation or an entire industry a benefit not offered to others.
- Ralph Nader: any program that involves the government giving more to private companies than it gets back -- i.e., where it is engaging in a transaction that cannot be justified as a fair market value exchange.
- Cato Institute: any government spending program that provides unique benefits or advantages to specific companies or industries.
- "Pork" is the same as the above but where the recipients may also be entities other than corporations, such as individuals or unincorporated groups.
Reduce, or preferably eliminate, all budget items that fit the descriptions enumerated above. They are "corporate welfare" or "pork" and are appropriate to be excised from the budget.
- There is need for some legitimate government grants for research, especially scientific research. But have all grant programs subjected to a system of rigorous review and inspection, especially a system which brings maximum exposure of the programs to public view and scrutiny.
- In addition to grant programs, review such areas as loan guarantees, bailouts, SBA loans, uses of eminent domain, no-bid contracts, earmarks, subsidies to energy and farming and transportation, and other examples of government-business collaborations, examining each one to identify cases of corporate welfare and pork.
Due to the insidious impact of lobbyists and special interests, take steps to ensure that the criteria for "corporate welfare" and "pork" are not set too leniently:
- Impose a mandated periodic review of all programs and require that any new program proposals pass a "no-pork" litmus test. Immediately withdraw any existing programs that fall into the classification of "corporate welfare" or "pork," or reorganize them so as to comply with the new rules.
- To rule out any political bias, require that all expenditures comply with a "no-pork" litmus test.
- Ensure that at least 50% of all monies are returned to states or localities and apportioned to them according to relative population size and not according to the "clout" or influence of an individual legislator, thus reserving up to 50% of Federal monies to be available for emergency circumstances or for expensive programs that benefit multiple states but not all, while also ensuring that an equitable amount of funding is available at the local level.
- Last Resort -- the "Meat ax": If after the first or second year the above fall short of producing sufficient savings through cuts in pork and corporate welfare programs, set a target figure each year for a minimum amount of tax-dollar savings to be realized through program cuts, and commit to achieving the targeted figure, whatever it may require.