Why isn’t Obama demanding corporate welfare cuts? $2.6 trillion without touching Safety Net!

[KoKo]

Dec. 18, 2012, 6:00 a.m. EST
Why isn’t Obama demanding corporate welfare cuts?
Commentary: $2.6 trillion could be saved without touching safety net

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – If President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner really want to reduce federal deficits, they’re doing a lousy job of it.

Rather than focusing their negotiations on specific and achievable savings that would stabilize our debt for a decade or more, the two leaders have instead been talking about areas of the budget in which there’s almost no common ground.

For Democrats, the only goal of the fiscal-cliff confrontation seems to be raising tax rates and getting more revenue from the wealthy. For Republicans, it’s shredding the safety net for seniors and the working poor.

They’re ignoring the most obvious solution: Eliminating unproductive and unnecessary federal spending and tax expenditures, especially corporate welfare that only benefits special interests. If even we didn’t have a deficit problem, we should eliminate or minimize this kind of wasteful spending.

We know why no one is talking about this solution: The corporate interests who feed at the public trough control the politicians and the media who have worked themselves into a frenzy over the debt and the fiscal cliff. You’ll never see a group of CEOs, like Honeywell’s David Cote or Jim McNerney of Boeing, come to Washington to lobby to have their subsidies eliminated, but you will see them ask for old and sick people to bear the costs of deficit reduction.

More with a list of Corporate Welfare that needs to be cut at.........

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=A524B3DC-4888-11E2-ACE1-002128040CF6

[djean111]

1. Yes.

I would have thought that starting to undermine Social Security would be a last-ditch money grab - but it looks like Social Security is considered easy to get at low hanging fruit.
Since SS does not even affect the deficit, it almost seems like something that was slipped on purpose, thinking we wouldn't catch it.

[Jim Warren]

2. Shell game

Interesting isn't it, how the discussion becomes framed of what's "on the table" and what's not.

Misdirection is how it's done with walnut shells and a pea.

[KoKo]

3. While the media babbles on about "Fiscal Cliff" and we here get into arguments over

what Obama may or may not do to our Safety Nets it seems Wall Street and the Big Corporations sit there and grin at the whole spectacle.

This was a good article from a Business site and it's a real jolt to realize that the Fiscal Cliff issues should be focused back on Wall Street, and the Corporations who don't pay any or very little taxes and fund many of our Congresscritters plus the lobbyists who do the dirty work to see that those Corporations and Wall Street are all taken care of.

[Jim Warren]

5. Indeed

That article linked is a must read...........$2.6T in savings......if anyone finds that discussion relevant anymore. (looks around for the sarcasm thingy)

[No Compromise]

4. I want Homeland Security on the chopping block right now!

It is a disgusting violation of our constitution and a huge slush fund for friends of the government.

[KoKo]

6. Well...they sure seem to overstep and be mismanaged in many areas...so

Why Not?

[woo me with science]

7. Hear, hear.

[woo me with science]

8. Yup.

Pretty interesting what's NOT on the table, isn't it.

K&R

[KoKo]

9. I wish the copyright rules allowed me to post this Business Columnists..

Full List of what could be cut to produce these savings.

Because, if our President would do this...then it would make up somewhat for how he Saved the Banking System of Crooks from ruin.

He would look very good if he did even a few things that this Columnist mentions.

Instead....it's more Fed Austerity where Savings Accounts yield close to Zero...Austerity and none of the Big Infrastructure Revitalization that we thought we Eleect Obama to do TWICE now!

Instead it's all blaming the Repugs when Obama WON OVERWHELMINGLY against the BIG Corporate Interests.

Here we are arguing once again about how we throw our Senior Citizens Under the Bus as Bargaining Chips with the Repugs!

(and there will be more of us Seniors at the end of his term who will face what is done now ...and what was done in the first term..if followed through)

[woo me with science]

21. I see really long stuff posted here sometimes.

I don't understand how the rules work, exactly.

But the link works. Thank you for posting this. It's fantastic.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Because, let's face it, neither major party will do anything to piss off their largest donors.

Not to mention that grossly expensive military hardware projects cost the taxpayer trillions but they're the kind of wasteful government spending Republicans love (and so do Democrats if they have a major defence contractor in their state).

[KoKo]

11. I wonder...are we seeing the Two Parties Merge into some Center Coalition?

I was working from home today so got to watch Obama's Presser about the Sandy Hook Massacre...

He did a Q&A...after his announcing his "Task Force" headed by the VP and it kind of went down hill for me after when he took very few Press Questions (I can certainly understand why..given the puny corporate paid off brains of MSM these days)...but, he took few questions but seemed to go on at length in a very dispirited way about why "Austerity" was what we Americans needed to do to "Compromise with the Repugs" and that it's "just what we have to do..." (to quote him from the many times he said that in the Press Conference).

I was left clueless about President Obama's Second Term from what he said in this Presser and felt very anxious about his next term since what he said wasn't different from what he's said since his inauguration and what he said after he was elected in 2008 where he moved to the RIGH just after the Votes Were In!

I have no idea where he stands for Democrats to the Left ...but, only that he compares us with the Tea Partiers of the Right and that he feels he and Boehner are negotiating for the AMERICAN PEOPLE to the CENTER RIGHT!

I hope when video of his Press Conference TODAY becomes available that people will watch it! It seemed to set off where he's going in his Second Term ...and for this Progressive Dem it made me wonder why WALL STREET was NEVER MENTIONED.
It was all about pitting the "Left vs. Right" and that "HE WAS GOING TO BE A CENTRIST" and didn't care about either side because.......... But, we Dems know he's governed to the Repugs (Wall Street Bailouts, Endless Wars (yes Dems support) and Dismantling Entitlements and Money for Fracking, Shale, Coal and all interest of Wall Street Commodity Traders.

Where is there anything but Corporate, Wall Street, Lobbyiist, Think Tank, consensus that he talks about?

We just re-elected him for Four More Years against a Disgusting, Wall Street Vulture Capitalist Candidate who had a Religious Affiliation that seemed kind of overwhelming and who Flamed Out and Insulted us with his idiocy and his Wife's Entitlement. Plus the MOST MONEY SPENT by RW Lobbyists and Hedge Fund, Corporate Wall Street BIG Wigs we've ever seen for the MONEY DONATED in American History.

But President Obama wants to DEAL WITH THESE POPLE? Give me a break!

[KoKo]

12. AMAZING!

[Hotler]

13. Stop picking on the rich. Now is not the time to point fingers. Geezz! n/t

[KoKo]

14. Kicking because I wonder why this particular discussion was never on the table

for either Democrats or Republicans?

Instead we fight over SS (not part of deficit) and definitions of what is rich for a tax increase. War spending and Corporate Welfare just don't seem to count as contributing to the deficit.

[xchrom]

15. du rec. nt

[forestpath]

16. K&R

[Zorra]

17. Well...do I really need to reply in detail, or is this a rhetorical question?

[woo me with science]

20. LOL.

Do you get tired? I get tired.

It's like trying to hold back the ocean with a spoon.

[socialist_n_TN]

18. Even as a Marxist, I wouldn't object.........

to these gifts if they weren't gifts, but were tied DIRECTLY TO JOB CREATION BY THESE CORPS. At least that would help the working class in the immediate time frame. But I have a problem just GIVING tax money away.

[democrattotheend]

19. It's more complicated than you think

In theory, I think it's a great idea. But you have no idea how powerful these corporate interests are in DC...even if we had 60 votes in the Senate and a huge margin in the House it would be tough to get the votes to go after the corporate interests.

Plus, you have to remember that one man's special interest is another's livelihood. Tax expenditures that benefit special interests also benefit their workers, and often the unions will fight cuts to particular industries as well because it means losing their jobs. And with the economy struggling to recover, any cut to special interests that will cost a lot of jobs could be a serious blow.

[KoKo]

22. The jobs went to cheaper countries...they've been gone for awhile and austerity

is the result of bad policies and loopholes advocated by politicians that allowed corporations who pay no or little taxes by offshoring and clever accounting to take the jobs out of here without any compensation or feelings of obligation to the workers.

How do you think the economy can recover when jobs have been offshored? People can't make money on savings and the rest lost money by low interest rates and Wall Street crookery in the Housing Boom that was perpetuated by Greenspan's low interest rate polcies and deregulation which allowed companies to allow folks to buy homes who could not afford them. The regulations for downpayments and credit checks were thrown out the window in the late 1990s. Then the banks started selling these loans and betting on the loans that they would fail..and the while thing imploded.

Where are the jobs going to come from? We need to spend on our Infrastructure to get some job growth in construction, engineering, architechture, etc. Austerity will not accomplish that.

[Ian62]

23. There are a lot more than $2.6 tn of Corporate Welfare cuts available over the next 10 years

Last edited Sat Dec 29, 2012, 09:57 PM - Edit history (1)

It's a good article detailing specific examples of savings that can be made.

But there are lots of others as well.

I reckon there are at least $10 trillion of such items over the next 10 years.
Perhaps as much as $15 trillion when you add in some of the other items of government waste and Corporate largesse.

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/it-is-very-easy-to-cut-1tn-from-federal.html

[Ian62]

24. When stock market journalists start posting articles asking why Obama

isn't targeting $2.6 trillion of Corporate Welfare you know something is wrong.

We already know the GOP is on the side of large Corporations.

Thanks for sharing.