There was a time when liberals used the term “corporate welfare” to describe the use of taxpayer backing to subsidize giant corporations like Boeing and General Electric. These days, as President Obama rallies to expand and extend such an agency, many on the Left scold Export-Import Bank’s critics as “far right” ideologues.
Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review recalls the good old days.
Rep. Rob Andrews (D., N.J.) said in 2011, “I’m not a big fan of the Export-Import Bank. . . . Very often what the Ex-Im Bank does is corporate welfare.”
In 2004, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) railed against the bank for subsidizing GE and other companies that “ship jobs overseas.” He too labeled these subsidies “corporate welfare.” Supporting Rep. Nadler’s legislation to restrict these subsidies, Rep. Ted Strickland (D., Ohio), later to become his state’s governor, used the same terminology.
The question today is how many Democrats will stand up to their party’s president and oppose corporate welfare.
