NEARLY $40 MILLION ROUTED TO SECRETIVE CORPORATE WELFARE PROGRAM
Reporter Rick Brundrett of The Nerve has a great story up this week highlighting the explosive growth of one of South Carolina’s shady, secretive “economic development” slush funds.
And while this so-called “Governor’s Closing Fund” is small potatoes compared to the nine-figure tax breaks doled out to big corporations like Boeing, it’s still money coming out of the wallets of individual taxpayers and small businesses.
According to Brundrett’s story, lawmakers are expanding this fund in the coming fiscal year from $16 million to $37.3 million – which is more than twice the amount of money S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley requested in her budget. If approved, the fund will have grown fivefold since its creation in 2006.
Oh, and here’s the best part …
Haley’s administration “provided no specifics on how the $37.3 million would be used.”
Of course not …
Two separate studies in the last three years (here and here) rank the Palmetto State among the very least transparent states in America with respect to disclosing details of “economic development” incentive packages. And that’s before we get to the matter of these incentives shifting (and raising) the tax burden on existing individuals and small businesses – who account for the vast majority of jobs yet receive no such preferential treatment.
Despite these concerns, Haley has made bribing companies to come to South Carolina her top priority – even though many of the promised jobs fail to match expectations (or even materialize).
We have consistently opposed spending tax dollars on corporate welfare bribes. It’s corrupt and unfair.
Oh … and it doesn’t work.
11 comments
“corrupt…unfair….doesn’t work”.
Words right out of the Cockroach Prayer Book
Fucking Cockroaches
FITS or The Nerve???
If you’re calling a smaller tax assessment, welfare, you are a F*#king idiot…
You liberals repeatedly call welfare checks, food stamps and grants to liberal groups “INVESTMENTS”…Obama does it and Clinton did it…A LOT…
Welfare and gov’t handouts produce NOTHING…but more, and more dependent, welfare recipients.
Luring JOB-PRODUCERS by not charging them as much of a gov’t penalty for the JOBS and PAYCHECKS they provide…is SMART business…It pays back, over time, a thousand-fold…
Sanford had 8 years to cut welfare…he did nothing. Now yall have quit that fight…but you sit around and run your mouth about corporate welfare. You are not only incompetent…you’re stupid….
Now Obama’s Solyndra fiasco may be corporate welfare…Stop that…or STFU….
“Oh … and it doesn’t work” That is correct. When you ride by BMW on I-85 or Boeing on I-526, those plants really aren’t there. It is just an illusion.
Wow, CNSYD, two huge wins in the space of 20 years. Untold billions down the toilet and SC still last or 2nd to last in every category. But yeah, great point: there are big plants in Greer and North Charleston, so corporate welfare must work.
Obviously there are others but narrow minds refuse to see them as they gloss over some of the largest. “Billions”. You Luddites say there is no accounting yet you assign “billions” How did you arrive at that? Also I ASSUME you subtracted the dollars spent in SC, payroll taxes paid by employers, increases in goods and services for employees, etc. You didn’t? Well I guess it would destroy your hypothesis.
Since when should we trust her with the money? Just ask the temple.
Didn’t FITS once accuse The Nerve of being bankrolled by the hated, and demonic (to liberals) Koch Bros.???…
Didn’t FITS laugh at The Nerve because it pays a FULLTIME staff of liberal-tarians, but only gets s about 30 hits a day???
Common Core is raging, the IRS persecuted South Carolinians, Medicaid Expansion Rejection is an example of in-state gov’t brilliance and the Obamacare disaster threatens everyone in this state …Silence from The Nerve..
Yet The Nerve attacks Corporations that have brought BILLIONS and BILLIONS in wealth to SC… and FITS jumps to his knees to lustily slurp…..
Is it any wonder we’re in the shape that we’re in…
Fits I kinda wish Nikki would have at least let you smell it. Maybe you would not be nagging on her so much. You should always remember the POWER of the DCGOV is the hands of the lawmakers, the legislature.
That should be “SCGOV” before some little liberal shit on here points my typo out and makes some smart ass juvenile comment.
Only GT, until now, would accuse a commenter of being liberal when it is only a typo, or was it a Freudian slip?