Ted Cruz is officially announcing his presidential campaign Monday, and one of the central focusses of his campaign website will be battling corporate welfare.
His homepage links to four policy areas where he cites his “proven record.” The economic policy page is called “Jobs & Opportunity.” As you might guess, his first economic-policy issue is repeal of Obamacare, on which he has certainly spent political energy. Cruz’s second and third economic policies sound almost obscure if you’re not either (a) a Beltway wonk, or (b) a Tea Party activist:
* Authored legislation to end taxpayer dollars subsidizing corporate fat cats, including the Ex-Im Bank.
* Opposed the Renewable Fuel Standard ethanol subsidy.
A guy is building a presidential campaign largely on opposing the Export-Import Bank and the ethanol mandate. This tells us something about the Republican electorate.
Historically, these are obscure issues where mostly the beneficiaries care about them. But today, groups like Heritage Action and the Club for Growth and local Tea Party groups have been agitating against them as corporate welfare for the past three years or so. For Tea Partiers, corporate welfare embodies what’s wrong with Washington — the insiders get rich unfairly, and the rest of us bear the cost and the risk.
Cruz building a campaign partly around this reminds us that he’s aiming squarely at the Tea Party. More broadly, it reminds us that these days being the “conservative” candidate means doing battle, at times with the Chamber of Commerce and the business lobby. As other candidates jump officially into the race, they’re going to need to show some bona fides on battling corporate welfare, too.
(h/t Dave Weigel on Twitter.)
