>Subtract the annoyingly formulaic ultra-leftism from this article,
>and the author has several good points to make about the seamier
>homologies b/w Nader's anti-globalism and Bush and Company's
>imperialist unilateralism ...
>
>Ralph Nader's political olive branch to Bush
>
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/mar2001/nad-m30.shtml
Here's the WSJ article. The WSWS analysis seems a bit overdone, no?
Doug
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Wall Street Journal - March 7, 2001
Ending Corporate Welfare as We Know It By Ralph Nader and Robert Weissman
If it took Richard Nixon to go to China, could George W. Bush be the president who ends corporate welfare as we know it?
That doesn't seem likely. But in a budget outline that offers little reason to smile to those concerned about the concentration of corporate power, the Bush administration has offered a glimmer of hope on the corporate-welfare front.
Over the past two decades, through administrations Republican and Democrat, the federal corporate-welfare budget has swelled with the proliferation of corporate subsidies and grants, giveaways, bailouts, tax expenditures, loan guarantees, export and overseas marketing assistance, and defense, transportation and other pork.
In his budget outline last week, Mr. Bush did not suggest he was ready to break out of this rut. But his administration has indicated that it will scale back funding for three corporate-welfare poster children: the Overseas Private Investment Corp., the Export-Import Bank and the Advanced Technology Program.
The budget proposes to cut back financing by 25% for Ex-Im, which provides loans and loan guarantees to assist foreign buyers in the purchase of U.S. exports. It also proposes to eliminate 2002 budget support for OPIC, which provides insurance against political risk, currency fluctuations and other uncertainties for overseas investments by U.S. corporations. Both agencies will continue to function (OPIC has carryover funding from previous budgets), but the budget outline anticipates more narrowly focused operations in the future. It calls also for a suspension of funding for ATP, a Commerce Department program that supports research and development efforts of private corporations.
These are positive steps. OPIC and Ex-Im put the federal government in roles properly performed by private insurers and lenders, forcing taxpayers to bear the risk in private commercial transactions that should be absorbed by business. Despite a thriving private capital market, ATP provides direct subsidies to high-tech firms, without any payback mechanisms or reason to believe that funded technologies offer unique social benefits.
Outside the budget process, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has voiced skepticism about the Wall Street bailouts regularly engineered by the International Monetary Fund in coordination with his Department. But while all these initial moves are in the right direction, there is much, much more to do rein in corporate welfare.
There are dozens of programs that should be canceled, or restructured to demand payback from the corporate beneficiaries. A recently released Congressional Budget Office list of proposed budget cuts includes dozens of corporate-welfare programs. The Green Scissors Coalition -- led by Friends of the Earth, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Taxpayers for Common Sense -- releases an annual list of corporate-welfare programs that hurt the environment. Last year, retired Rep. John Kasich (R., Ohio), then chairman of the House Budget Committee, led a bipartisan coalition that targeted a modest handful of programs. These included ATP, coal-industry supports that masquerade under the misnomer of "clean coal" (which Mr. Bush seeks to continue, and strengthen), defense merger subsidies, and the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, or PNGV, a program born during the Clinton administration.
As it formalizes its budget proposals, the Bush administration could save American taxpayers hundreds of millions annually by eliminating PNGV. This is a partnership between seven federal agencies, 20 federal laboratories and the big three car makers -- General Motors, Ford and what is now DaimlerChrysler -- that is seeking to develop a fuel-efficient "Supercar."
Is there an industry less in need of government support for research than the highly capitalized auto industry? The government is supporting research that the industry could easily do on its own (at least to keep up with the leaders in fuel-efficiency technologies, Toyota and Honda) and should be mandated to undertake to meet tougher environmental standards. The PNGV is an administrative nightmare. It has no centralized coordination, and various arms of government cannot even agree on exactly how much is being spent on the program. It puts a government stamp of approval on the industry's replacement of competition with collusion -- and for the same industry which, in the 1960s, faced conspiracy charges for suppression of air pollution technologies.
Above all, the PNGV initiative has served as a smokescreen behind which the car makers hide to evade improved fuel-efficiency standards. While taxpayers poured more than $1 billion into PNGV during the Clinton administration, average fuel efficiency actually declined. This boondoggle does not even require the manufacturers to deploy any technologies developed through the program.
It is no secret that such irrational corporate-welfare programs persist because strong industry lobbies back them. When the House of Representatives voted last year to eliminate funding for PNGV, the industry blocked the effort. Similarly, a broad cross-section of industry mobilized to retain OPIC when it was on wobbly legislative legs several years ago. Corporate interests have already started organizing to rescue OPIC and Ex-Im.
The heated legislative conflicts sure to ensue on Mr. Bush's proposed corporate-welfare cutbacks will test his administration's commitment to "reduce subsidies that primarily benefit corporations rather than individuals." Similar early tough talk from the Clinton administration on several subsidy programs soon subsided, and was replaced by an eager embrace and expansion of the corporate welfare state.
If Mr. Bush is eager to chalk up budgetary savings, there's a long list of corporate-welfare programs, subsidies and tax expenditures that richly deserve cutting. Achieving these savings will require the political courage to offend the very corporate fat cats who funded his campaign. Does the president have that courage?
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Mr. Nader, the author of "Cutting Corporate Welfare" (Seven Stories Press, 2000), was the presidential candidate for the Green Party. Mr. Weissman is editor of Multinational Monitor magazine.