It's time for the GOP to take on corporate welfare queens

Uncle Sam could save billions of dollars a year if it just limited corporate welfare to any firm with profits of $1 million or even $10 million or less and
prevented double-dipping by prohibiting the Fortune 100 from receiving more than one form of federal assistance at a time.

Imagine for a moment that you are sitting on your couch watching TV and there is a knock on the door. There in a corporate suit is an employee of General Dynamics with a tin cup and he asks if you would contribute a dollar for a research project. You would slam the door in his face. But somehow when the government collects a dollar from each of us and gives the money to General Dynamics, this is considered in Washington a wise “investment.”

Here’s a pretty safe bet: We’re never going to balance our budget in Washington again until our elected officials get big business off the dole. Paul Ryan wants to do that. So does Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. They are, alas, lonely voices in the GOP. Too many of their colleagues have come to regard farm subsidies to wealthy agribusinesses and Export-Import Bank loans to Boeing as Republican entitlements. And then Republicans wonder why the public holds them in such disdain.