Dear Editor,

There are some serious whiners out there today. I was watching Glenn Beck on T.V. a couple of weeks ago, and he was railing against the progressives throughout American history. He says that the progressives have caused most (all) of our modern ills. It is typical that a spokesman in a corporation would want to rile people up about social programs that are, by and large, beneficial for our daily lives while diverting attention from the real problems of wasteful governmental spending.

In the 1990’s, our Congress reformed the AFDC (welfare) program. The result: welfare rolls are down and record levels of former recipients are now working and paying taxes, not collecting them. “Two years and off” time limit, that’s it!

America’s most costly welfare recipients today are Fortune 500 companies. Corporate welfare is a large and growing component of the federal budget. There are no time limits for corporate welfare benefits. New tactics to take on the corporate beneficiaries of federal subsidies are unquestionably necessary and Congress should eliminate unjustified tax breaks. They should reduce the deficit using corporate welfare cuts, not educational funding cuts. It is imperative for economic reasons that this Congress reduces the deficit. Why not get rid of corporate welfare in the Defense and Agriculture Departments and use the savings to reduce the deficit?

There is no plan in Congress or the White House to attack business subsidies. By offering corporate welfare grants to Fortune 500 companies, they are taxing less affluent workers and giving the money to more affluent stockowners.

Congress should reconstitute the idea of a Corporate Welfare Elimination Commission. They should require that a bipartisan Commission recommend at least $50 billion per year in corporate welfare spending cuts. A second Commission could be appointed to deal with cleaning out corporate welfare from the tax code. They could identify economically inefficient tax breaks and then calculate how much we could reduce the deficit if we eliminated all of those loopholes. Congress should also enact time limits on corporate welfare and prohibit private firms that receive federal grants, insurance, loans, or loan guarantees from lobbying (companies that receive grant money turn around and use some of the grant money to lobby Congress for more grant money).

If Congress eradicates corporate welfare, the beneficiaries will be the taxpayers, workers, future generations and the overall U.S. economy. Wayne Salter

Suburbs of Perkins