Welfare Turns Into a Suite Deal - Rahm Emanuel

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

Under the GOP, corporate titans are lining up for government handouts.

Remember when the "welfare queen" was a woman driving a Cadillac? Today, that character has become a CEO riding in the back of a limousine.

The Bush administration and the Republican-led House have taken steps toward providing an unprecedented taxpayer-funded handout to private companies.

The energy bill, which passed the House and will be taken up again by the Senate in January, contains nearly $30 billion in such benefits, including $11.3 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies that just had one of their most profitable years on record.

That bill also contains $18 billion in federal loan guarantees for private construction of a gas pipeline from Alaska to Chicago; $1.1 billion to build a nuclear reactor in Idaho to produce hydrogen; $95 million to research turning dead turkeys into energy; and funding to construct a rain forest museum in Iowa. This is while Pell Grants — money that sends kids to college — are being frozen for the first time in 10 years.

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What today's Republicans have created is a whole new culture of welfare that threatens the very free-market system they claim to champion. It's time to get the new corporate "welfare queen" out of his limousine.


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