Dear Editor:
Will the federal gravy train continue during the new Congress? My guess is that it will. As long as we allow it, politicians will never quit ladling "the gravy" (taxpayer dollars) to those from whom they get votes or big campaign contributions.
The list of failed giveaway programs is virtually unending. Amtrak, food stamps, Headstart (the government's own study shows any improvement in test scores dissolve within a few years), corporate welfare for farmers, are just a few of them. These failed programs cost taxpayers more every year.
The latest egregious example of "gravy for the greenies" is the Ivanpah Solar Power plant in the Mojave Desert. (Google is one of the owners.) Taxpayers guaranteed $1.6 billion of the loans for the plant. (This is the facility that sets birds on fire. Federal wildlife investigators said they saw an average of a "streamer" every two minutes. They call them streamers because the birds actually catch fire as they fly through the concentrated solar rays.)
The plant started commercial operation in December 2013. According to an article in American Thinker the plant can only produce a little over 25 percent of the promised output. (They claim the sun isn't shining as much as they anticipated.) Because of the plant's abysmal performance they want the feds to give (not loan) them $539 million, to pay off part of the loans on the plant.
According to Open Secrets web site, during the 2014 election cycle, Google handed out nearly $4 million in campaign contributions and spent $29 million lobbying. NRG Energy, another of the Ivanpah owners, handed out $180,000 in contributions and spent $3 million lobbying politicians.
Billionaire, and big Democrat donor, Warren Buffet also benefit from crony capitalism. Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's company, owns BNSF railway. According to BNSF it has went from zero oil trains five years ago to eight trains a day. The Congressional Research Service says it costs $5/barrel to transport oil via pipeline and $10-15/barrel via rail. The longer Dems can hold up the Keystone pipeline the longer the gravy flows into Buffett's pockets, and then into Dems pockets in the form of campaign contributions.
We need a federal government, but we need one with far less power than is currently being wielded.