One of the biggest difficulties for the free-enterprise cause is that there’s no natural, easily identifiable coalition against corporate welfare. The guys who get the handouts know who they are, and since government intervention tends to help the biggest, most connected companies, they are easily organized and instantly influential. Meanwhile, the harms of corporate welfare are economic distortions, which for the most part are dispersed and not always obvious.
But technology, Citizens United and the Tea Party have changed that. Now, an anti-corporate welfare lobby is starting to grow, and it’s funded by really rich businessmen who believe in free enterprise rather than the mindset of profit-by-any-means-necessary.
Today, successful food-company founder Chris Rufer has an op-ed in the New York Times calling on Congress to let the Export-Import Bank expire:
This is part of an effort by a group called Freedom Partners (born from the political network of the Koch brothers) to rally against Ex-Im, a federal agency that most subsidizes giant U.S. exporters and their Wall Street lenders.
Freedom Partners has launched a website about Ex-Im, and produced the above TV ad. This campaign will involve spending money and targeting potential swing votes. It’s kind of what like the mainstream business lobby does, with the key difference that this campaign is opposed to corporate welfare.
Here’s the key point that too many people miss, the rising influence of conservative business owners — like Rufer and the Kochs — acting outside of the mainstream business lobby, has yielded a more potent threat to corporate welfare.
