Subsidizing Of The Airlines Industry

20 Pages 5038 Words

Introduction
Very few markets in the United States have been untouched by government interventions of one kind or another. The airline industry is no exception. Government regulations and subsidies of the airline industry are a common occurrence. Only the form and reason change as society and its economics change. President Harry Truman, in 1951, subsidized the airline business not only to support the growth of an infant industry, but also to support aircraft for military endeavors. In that instance, the airline subsidy merged with compensation for the cost of handling mail and postal expenditures.
Subsidies to Private Businesses and Corporate Welfare Programs
Federal subsidies to private businesses cost taxpayers $87 billion per year. That is over 30 percent more than the Cato Institute's 1997 corporate welfare estimate of $65 billion. The Cato Institute's of 1997 was a plan to finally stop and put an end to welfare, and to help the people with jobs, training, and going to school. If corporate welfare were eliminated tomorrow, the federal government could provide taxpayers with an annual tax cut more than twice as large as the tax rebate checks mailed out in 2001. President Bush's first proposed budget recommends about $12 billion in total corporate welfare cuts. Most notable are the proposed cuts for the Advanced Technology Program, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Maritime Administration's guaranteed loan program, and the Small Business Administration. However, the Bush budget proposal also increases some of the largest corporate welfare programs, such as federal aid to oil companies through the fossil energy research and development program and research subsidies to aerospace companies as well as increases for the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Foreign Agriculture Service, and the Conservation Reserve Program Spending bills working their way through the House and Senate App...