For your reading pleasure, the libertarians over at Cato Institute have produced a very useful Policy Analysis document on Ending Corporate Welfare As We Know It.

Here’s a tidbit on how the government wisely uses your tax dollars: through sugar price support programs, the United States spends $1.4 billion ($1,400,000,000) of your money to make sugar cost more. About 40% of the giveaway benefits the largest 1% of sugar farms, with the 33 largest sugar cane plantations each receiving more than $1,000,000 each, all so that you can pay more at the grocery store (the total cost to the consumer in higher sugar prices is estimated to be several billion dollars every year).

Next time a Republican complains to you about welfare recipients, it would be good to point out the biggest and most unproductive welfare leeches in the United States are monster corporations in industry and agribusiness. By comparison, TANF, WIC, and other traditional poverty-based welfare programs consume a tiny percentage of the federal budget and have relatively high success rates in supporting people through temporary dire circumstances. But for some reason I don’t see Tommy Thompson developing a welfare-to-work program for General Motors or the big sugar cane plantations, even though they stay on billion-dollar doles year after year after year.