ABSTRACT
Solutions range from the comprehensive (legislatively enacted bans on corporate welfare at the federal and the state levels) to the piecemeal. They even include a proposal to further empower the federal government, king of the corporate welfare world, by imposing a federal excise tax on state and local incentives. Failing a ban, Congress might attach sunset provisions to individual pieces of corporate welfare, thus requiring lawmakers to vote at regular intervals in defense of these giveaways. The commission would assemble a list of corporate subsidies that lacked sufficient justification; Congress would then vote yea or nay on the entire package. The establishment of such a commission would be a frank recognition that members of Congress are cowards. Or if that seems too harsh, that they are unable and unwilling to vote against programs that they believe wasteful if in so voting they endanger their prospects for re-election.
