The Size of Corporate Welfare

Ed Feulner reports:

Another place Washington could trim the welfare spending is the "Advanced Technology Program."

Congress created this program in the 1980s to supposedly "bridge the gap between the research lab and the marketplace." In a country known for its innovations (the BlackBerry and the iPod, to name just two recent examples), it's not clear why the government should be involved in this process. After all, when a company does research, it generally plans to bring the product it develops to market. That's the sole reason private companies spend $150 billion each year on R & D.

Still, the program lives on, handing out more than $150 million per year to companies including IBM, General Electric, General Motors, 3M and Motorola. And while that seems like a small amount when compared with the billions Washington squanders elsewhere (the federal government can't account for $24.5 billion it spent last year -- it knows the money was spent, but doesn't know where it went or what it bought), killing this program would be a start.

Lawmakers could then move on to eliminate cotton subsidies ($264 million in 2004), peanut subsidies ($213 million in 2004), dairy subsidies ($206 million in 2004), sugar beet subsidies ($48 million in 2003), and all the rest. Then we'd be well on our way to eliminating corporate welfare.

The government doesn't really help the poor.It's rent-seeking for the well to do.