ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
THE WELFARE-reform legislation signed this week by President Clinton is projected to save about $55 billion over the next six years. Never mind how many kids will be pushed into poverty.
The money saved can be put to good use helping struggling corporate giants such as General Electric, McDonald's, Georgia-Pacific, Pillsbury, Getty Oil and E&J Gallo, not to mention defense contractors.
Giveaways to such companies will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars while benefits for disabled children are cut and legal immigrants can no longer receive food stamps. Why is this so?
When the serious tussle for a balanced budget developed last year between Congress and the White House, everyone from Newt Gingrich to Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert Reich targeted corporate welfare. According to the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, the government spends about $75 billion annually on direct subsidies to businesses, from propping up segments of American agriculture to international marketing for Fortune 500 companies.
For a while it looked as though some of these subsidies, tax breaks and other forms of government largess would be first on the chopping block. But, of course, compassion for big business prevailed.
Take Archer Daniels Midland, the primary manufacturer of ethanol and primary beneficiary of a $3.6 billion federal-assistance program for the ethanol industry. House Speaker Gingrich lambasted the giveaway; Sens. Bill Bradley, a Democrat, and Don Nickles, a Republican, introduced legislation to phase out the subsidy, saying the ethanol industry ``has been living off the public dole long enough.''
But Archer Daniels Midland was not without access to the corridors of power. Among other things, it and its owner had contributed more than $2 million in ``soft money'' to the Republican and Democratic parties since 1988. Predictably, aid to ethanol survived.
Meantime, it's no coincidence that energy, telecommunications, tobacco and other industries looking for handouts and tax breaks are helping to underwrite both parties' political conventions. Big insurance companies want to preserve a special break on life insurance that nets them millions of dollars annually. Energy businesses are hoping to protect government royalties from drilling on public lands. They're wining and dining congressmen and convention delegates right and left.
Will Congress and the president - Clinton or Bob Dole - ever end corporate welfare as we know it? Not likely. Not, at least, until they get serious about campaign-finance reform. The businesses and industries whose corporate pockets are lined with taxpayers' funds are the same that line lawmakers' pockets with big political donations.
Retired Gen. Colin Powell got it almost right: ``You see a lot of politicians attacking welfare queens, but you see them a little reluctant to take on the welfare kings on K Street'' (Washington's kings' row for corporate lobbyists). In fact, the politicians are more than a little reluctant to upset their cozy arrangement.
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