The Chicago Tribune reports:
With little fanfare, a deal is moving forward to direct billions in U.S. tax dollars to an unlikely beneficiary — the giant British liquor producer that makes Captain Morgan rum. Under the agreement, London-based Diageo PLC will receive tax credits and other benefits worth $2.7 billion over 30 years, including the entire $165-million cost of building a state-of-the-art distillery on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory…. “The U.S. taxpayer is basically being asked to line the pockets of the world’s largest liquor producer,” says Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog organization. With the exception of Ellis and a handful of lawmakers, however, the deal has attracted little opposition in Congress or elsewhere. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said he does not have authority to block or investigate the project. Criticism on the Hill has been confined to a small group that includes Republican Congressmen Dan Burton of Indiana and Darrel Issa of California, plus a handful of Democrats with large Puerto Rican constituencies.
Just something to keep in mind as we watch the federal deficit explode. And remember when the president made such a big show of asking his cabinet to cut $100 million from their budgets — collectively. They struggled to do even that. Meanwhile, they’re giving $165 million to a British distillery? Oh, but the left was outraged at the prospect of spending just one more penny on fighter jets. Fiscal responsibility and all.
