Sen. Marco Rubio is one of the Republican candidates for president in 2016 who has spoken out against corporate welfare and crony capitalism.
He first took up the flag of killing the health-insurer bailout in Obamacare, known as the risk corridors. He has opposed the Export-Import Bank. He won in 2010 by beating a K Street-backed candidate in Charlie Crist.
But Rubio’s anti-corporate welfare record has a big black mark on it: he supports the sugar program, which is a costly boondoggle mostly benefitting a few Florida sugar growers.
Now Rubio is being lobbied hard by ethanol interests in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation caucuses will be held in about a year. An article in The Hill this weekend had this:
As Rubio tries to portray himself as a reformer, and a candidate who can lead the party in a new direction, he could knee-cap himself if he stands up for the two most naked pieces of special-interest corporate welfare in the U.S.–sugar and ethanol.
