USA:
Congress examines "corporate welfare"

Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich of Ohio won't have done his 
chances of winning big-business support for his candidature much good with 
his latest move as Chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Kasich's Committee held the first ever congressional hearings into what US 
critics call "corporate welfare", the hundreds of billions of dollars 
annually given to big corporations from the public purse in the form of 
subsidies, bailouts, giveaways and tax exemptions.

So blatant are these vast transfers into the pockets of the richest 
corporations that even conservative organisations and politicians (like 
Kasich himself) are revolted. The looting of government (i.e. public) funds 
has itself become big business.

One of the witnesses who appeared before the Committee, consumer activist 
Ralph Nader described his own testimony in an article in the San Jose 
Mercury News (the paper that exposed the CIA's role in introducing 
crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles' black community).

"My testimony described several categories of corporate welfare. These 
included the giveaways of hard rock minerals like gold and molybdenum to 
domestic and foreign mining companies, the giveaway of the public airwaves, 
which belong to the people, to radio and television stations (including the 
latest $70 billion gift of the digital spectrum), taxpayer subsidies for 
giant defence corporate mergers and commercial weapons exports to 
governments overseas, and making patients pay twice for important drugs — 
once as taxpayers to develop the medicine and again as patients after the 
federal government gives a monopoly marketing power to the price-gouging 
drug company."

Nader cited a woman with ovarian cancer charged $14,000 for six treatments 
of Taxol sold by Bristol-Meyers-Squibb. He pointed out that "more than $30 
million of taxpayers' money developed this drug right through the human 
clinical trials.

"Bristol-Meyers got it and no other company did. So there is no price 
competition to drive the Taxol price down. If patients with cancer have to 
go on Medicaid because they cannot afford this gouge, then the taxpayers 
again pay Bristol-Meyers for Taxol.

"By the way", he added, "Bristol-Meyers is not obligated to pay the 
government any royalties on what this year will be $1 billion in sales. Do 
you know any business that develops and gives away its assets like that?", 
he asked.

Most of the major media organisations ignored the Budget Committee 
hearings, but cable news channel C-Span covered it live and "relayed a 
remarkable array of witnesses and testimony to the American people who are 
paying these bills".