Federal Subsidies
Daniel D. Huff, professor emeritus of social work at Boise State University, published a comprehensive analysis of corporate welfare in 1993. Huff gave a very conservative tally of corporate welfare expenditures in the United States, estimating it would have been at least $170 billion in 1990. Huff compared this number with other forms of social welfare:
“While more than 170 billion dollars is expended on assorted varieties of corporate welfare the federal government spends 11 billion dollars on Aid for Dependent Children. The most expensive means tested welfare program, Medicaid, costs the federal government 30 billion dollars a year or about half of the amount corporations receive each year through assorted tax breaks. S.S.I., the federal program for the disabled, receives 13 billion dollars while American businesses are given 17 billion in direct federal aid.
Government Subsidies Are Concentrated to a Small Number of Companies
At least 75 percent of cumulative disclosed subsidy dollars have gone to just 965 large corporations, even though these companies account for only about 10 percent of the number of announced awards, according to data compiled since 1976 by Good Jobs First, a policy resource center on subsidy data. The Fortune 500 corporations alone accounted for more than 16,000 subsidy awards, worth $63 billion – mostly in the form of tax breaks. In dollar terms, the biggest recipient by far is Boeing, with a total of more than $13 billion.
