Many of today's most costly welfare recipients are Fortune 500 companies.

Taxpayers for Common Sense Legislative Director and co-founder Jill Lancelot testified June 30th against corporate welfare at a hearing chaired by House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich.

While paying lip service to reform, Congress and the Administration have increased government aid to profitable businesses. Time magazine recently estimated that Congress spends $125 billion in federal funds each year to subsidize corporations.

The mechanisms of corporate welfare include everything but the kitchen sink: low interest loans; cheap insurance; price supports for agri-business; unneeded government contracts; tax breaks; and, under-valuation of taxpayer-owned resources.

TCS believes Congress should cut support for those who do not need help – including large or profitable companies. TCS would start by cutting support for those companies and industries that have historically received the most benefit or are economically mature.

Another good set of principles to apply are those embodied in the 1996 welfare reform act that applies to poor individuals – welfare should not be a way of life.

Perhaps the biggest violator of that principle is the mining industry. For more than a century, the 1872 Mining Law has enabled companies to buy mineral-rich public lands for no more than $5 an acre and to extract gold and other precious minerals found there free of charge.

In 1994, Toronto-based American Barrick Resources Corp. purchased 1,950 acres of Nevada desert containing an estimated $10 billion in gold for only $9,765. A year later, a Danish company bought public land in Idaho containing more than $1 billion in minerals for only $275.

Proponents argue that business subsidies create jobs. But the benefits are not always apparent. According to the CATO Institute, from 1990 to 1994, the Advanced Technology Program, a federal subsidy for high-tech research, gave more than $250 million to AT&T, GE, GM, IBM and other companies. Nonetheless, the companies reduced their workforce by 329,000 during that period.

Handouts to these companies are often reciprocated with congressional campaign contributions. McDonald's receives millions of dollars from the federal government to market their products overseas. In the last donation cycle, individuals and interest groups with ties to McDonald's gave federal lawmakers more than $441,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

More than 90 percent of American businesses do not receive subsidies. These companies are disadvantaged by corporate welfare that props up obsolete industries, stifles innovation, corrupts the political system, and wastes taxpayer money.