Government Waste

Are you aware that your government, using your tax dollars, provided a grant to McDonald's to help it advertise Big Macs in Europe? Are you aware that the funding totalled $1.6 million?

It did. It was part of a the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Market Access Program that takes taxpayer money and funnels it to wealthy corporations in the name of "promoting" American products. But McDonald's isn't the only corporation that gets taxpayer money. In recent years, politicans have doled out $300,000 to Campbell's Soup, $1.4 billion to IBM, $4.9 million to Ernest and Julio Gallo Wineries, $671 million to General Electric, and $3 million to the California Raisin Brand.

It's called corporate welfare, and it's how Democratic and Republican politicians enrich their big-business friends--at taxpayers' expense. The cost is staggering. All told, there are more than 100 corporate welfare programs on the books. These programs cost taxpayers an amazing $87 billion per year. And corporate welfare is just the tip of the iceberg.

Libertarians want to turn off the Washington D.C. money spigot that enriches multi-billion dollar companies at the expense of working people. We propose to end all direct federal handouts, subsidized loans, and industry research programs. We also want to return the federal government to its limited, Consitutional functions. By doing so, the majority of government programs would be privatized (when valuable) or eliminated (if useless), and the tax dollars used to fund those agencies and programs would stay where it belongs--in your pocket.