Timothy P. Carney suggested before the last election that Republicans should take up the banner to end corporate welfare. And he's made some concrete suggestions on just where to begin. See An anti-corporate welfare, anti-cronyism agenda for the 114th Congress. Here are his bullet points:
Health Care
Repeal Obamacare’s Insurer Bailout (“Risk Corridors”), or Make It Budget Neutral.
End the Individual Mandate.
Take Away States’ Exclusion Authority.
End Guaranteed Payments, and Reform the Doctor Cartel.
Energy
End the Ethanol Mandate and Ethanol Tax Breaks.
End Renewable Energy Subsidies.
End Oil Subsidies.
Taxes
Make Corporate Taxes Simpler, Lower, and More Neutral.
Reform the Research and Development Tax Credit.
Finance
Abolish or Rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Shrink the Moat of Regulations That Protects Big Banks from Competition.
Kill Dodd-Frank’s Too-Big-to-Fail Designation.
Trade
Kill the Export-Import Bank.
Abolish the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Repeal the Jones Act.
Agriculture
End the Sugar Program.
Reform or Abolish the Federal Crop Insurance Program.
What you see here is merely a list. Go to the article to read the details of each.
Could a Republican Congress with a Republican president do this? I would like to think they could, but it would take a lot of public pressure. Here at Midland, Texas, our own Congressman has both feet deeply rooted in the farm subsidy programs, and he gets 90% of the vote without even campaigning. He's probably not an outlier. Each of the other Representatives likely have their own pork projects they want to protect, and they're very supportive of each other.
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