BUT it's probably not the one you've been conditioned to first think of.
No these 'Welfare Recipients' are very careful to use the language of "economic growth" to disguise their Government Dependencies ...
First a few definitions:
Corporate welfare -- Wikipedia
Corporate welfare is a term that analogizes corporate subsidies to welfare payments for the poor. The term is often used to describe a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations, and implies that corporations are much less needy of such treatment than the poor.
[...]
Subsidies considered excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare. The label of corporate welfare is often used to decry projects advertised as benefiting the general welfare that spend a disproportionate amount of funds on large corporations, and often in uncompetitive, or anti-competitive ways.
[...]
Some economists consider the recent bank bailouts in the United States to be corporate welfare.[7][8] U.S. politicians have also contended that zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve System to financial institutions during the global financial crisis were a hidden, backdoor form of corporate welfare.[9]
Hmmm? Any examples of "
Corporate Welfare" that you can think of in our 'grand old payola' system, with respect to Big Oil?
How about these:
The Truth About Energy Subsidies
Fossil Fuel Gets More
by Nick Hodge, energyandcapital.com -- June 19, 2012
[...]
The International Energy Agency, however, defines a subsidy as “any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers, or lowers the price paid by energy consumers.”
Use that definition and the IEA says government handouts to fossil fuels dwarf what is given to renewables.
Their most recent figures show oil, coal, and gas got $312 billion in 2009 -- while renewables got “only” $57 billion.
Why such a great difference?
Well, we've never had to send ships to stop Iran from blocking solar shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. The Bureau of Land Management doesn't give away millions of acres of land to drill for wind turbines. And we've never used federal dollars to clean up an efficiency spill...
You get the idea.
Most people don't consider this type of spending before they jump to the conclusion that renewables are expensive.
Yet it's precisely this type of wasteful hidden spending that's led to our woeful budget deficits.
Last time I checked, $312 billion was five times more than $57 billion.
[...]
But, but, but the GOP says: "Sweetheart loans to companies like Solyndra, is what's wrong with the economy."
Perhaps, they should look in the mirror -- and see who is their Corporate Valentine perennially looking back, eh?
The GOP will say it's a question of "spending priorities." They are very careful to use the language of "economic growth" to cover up their Government Giveaways ...
No matter what other social programs may get hurt in the process; long as their old flame, crony sweethearts keep $$$miling back, their way. They're smittened.
Oil Lobby Says Obama’s Call To End Big Oil Handouts Is ‘Discriminatory’
by Rebecca Leber, ThinkProgress - Climate Progress -- Feb 24, 2012
The oil lobby American Petroleum Institute weighed in on President Obama’s corporate tax reform that closes an array of tax loopholes, including $4 billion in subsidies for the oil industry. Not surprisingly, API is unhappy. API President Jack Gerard played victim, calling the plan "discriminatory" [...]
Here’s another fact: the industry receives a whopping $7 billion in tax breaks each year.
Gerard also claimed big oil pays one of the highest effective tax rates, and yet Exxon Mobil -- the most profitable oil company -- paid a 17.6 percent federal effective tax, lower than the average American. The company paid zero taxes to the federal government in 2009. The oil industry is fighting to keep its handouts, despite posting record-breaking profits of $137 billion in 2011.
[...]
Why It’s Hard To Trust Romney On Oil Subsidies
by Rebecca Leber, thinkprogress.org -- Oct 4, 2012
[...]
The world’s five largest oil corporations, which include Exxon, receive $2.4 billion tax breaks annually, not the “small drillers” as Romney claims. Annual tax breaks for the entire oil and gas industry total $4 billion. The Center for American Progress details the specific deductions and tax breaks that oil companies receive at taxpayers’ cost.
The public overwhelmingly favors ending these permanent tax breaks, at the same time Republicans claim they don’t exist. While the five largest oil companies earned $137 billion profit last year, and $60 billion for the first half of 2012, they paid relatively low taxes, like ExxonMobil’s 13 percent federal effective tax rate.
Remember this? It was a crystallization of
GOP "spending priorities." In plain old 'black and yellow' for all to see.
The Dems choosing helping kids learn. The R's choosing helping them burn -- the R's preferred fuel of the future.
Big Bird fired? Cut wouldn't end PBS or balance budget.
by Schuyler Velasco, Correspondent, csmonitor.com -- Oct 4, 2012
[...]
Furthermore, the budget benefits would be miniscule. The CPB’s [Corporation of Public Broadcasting] two-year, $445 million government grant makes up less than 1/100th of a percent of a Federal Budget worth upwards of $3.5 trillion. Think Progress blogger Alyssa Rosenberg details all of the proposed arts funding in Obama’s 2013 budget, including subsidies for the Smithsonian Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. The total funding is $1.55 billion, still a tiny fraction of overall spending.
$445 million government CPB grant for 2 years =
$0.445 billion
These two "social giveaways" look like this if you bother to chart them:
There is a reason our economy sometime flounders. And it's not because of the 'Welfare Recipients' we've been told to abhor ...
GOP's Job Plan:
No the real 'Welfare Kings' hide behind masks of an entirely different color:
And Business for them has been very, VERY good; Gangbusters Good:
It is their Economic World, afterall. They built it.
And they continue to 'milk it' for all that it's worth.
Something that would be called "Welfare on Steroids," if certain Congressional Romeo's didn't always run to their rhetorical defense:
Think about the Economy people. Think about the Jobs. End of story. (Now stop thinking.)
Break out those Drills!