End Corporate Welfare

Annually, over $100 billion dollars of taxpayer money is shoveled over to companies in the form of tax credits, subsidies, and tax breaks by state and local governments. Most of this money was spent as states competed to attract companies to their areas. The real goal of these political giveaways wasn’t jobs or investment, rather politicians were paying for headlines, cultivating new political donors, or rewarding loyal ones. This is yet another example of our system of government being rigged by powerful interests at the expense of everyday Americans.

 

The sheer amount of money being paid to companies per job created points to no other explanation, except possibly incompetence on the part of political leaders.

 

West Virginia paid Nucor Steel $1.7 billion to locate to their state and bring 900 jobs. That translates into almost $2 million per job created! The package was rushed through the West Virginia legislature in only 2 days so that the Governor to include the passage as an applause line in his state of the state address.

 

Kansas agreed to pay Panasonic over $800 million to locate a battery factory in its state without providing any concrete jobs guarantees. The factory is part of Tesla’s supply chain – a company controlled by the world’s richest person. Notwithstanding the fact that GM has had a factory in Kansas for over 3 decades, Kansas politicians decided to use taxpayer money – including money paid by GM’s 2,100 union employees – to subsidize the supply chain of a competitor.  

 

These are just 2 out of hundreds of examples of our politicians selling us out for their own benefit.

 

This exchange of taxpayer money for campaign money and headlines disproportionately benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. In fact, the top 10% of wealth holders own, either directly or indirectly, roughly 90% of the stock in public companies. Ownership of private companies receiving these state subsidies is even more concentrated with the wealthiest Americans.    

 

In order to end this assault on the American taxpayer, we would propose three major changes to how states and local governments are allowed to spend public money:

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1. Ending the race to the bottom by states by requiring every incentive package pay for itself within 8 years through the income and property taxes paid by the company receiving the incentive and its employees.

2. Extending the “pay to play” prohibitions to these incentive packages effectively preventing companies or their employees from making campaign contributions that benefit the very political candidates who are overseeing these giveaways.

3. Requiring full transparency of all public incentives being proposed at least two weeks before any final decision is made on granting them.

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It’s time to fix our broken political system and end the looting of our money by greedy corporations and corrupt politicians by demanding real accountability.