Make Corporations Pay Their Own Bills

British Petroleum has spent $35.5 billion cleaning up the mess it made with its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  But BP also was allowed to write off that cost as an expense of doing business, and so it got back more than $10 billion.  In other words, you and I paid British Petroleum $10 billion to clean up its own mess.

It’s not just BP.  Bankers who helped drive our economy to its knees in 2008 were forced to pay off some of the people they had cheated, but then they were allowed to write off those payments, just as BP was.  Same result: you and I paid Big Banks billions to clean up their own mess. 

There must be countless other Big Businesses that charge you and me for the Big Mistakes they make.  Add that to the billions of dollars we pay in corporate welfare to some of the nation’s biggest Big Businesses, a significant bite has been taken out of our nation’s spending.

As Everett Dirksen said, “A billion here and a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Hey, I have an idea.  Our federal government really does need to cut spending, so why don’t we start by eliminating those generous gifts?  And why don’t we also eliminate the billions we pay in corporate welfare to some of the nation’s biggest Big Businesses?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to make corporations pay for their own messes, and eliminate welfare to the rich, than to take the money from old folks (Social Security) and old sick folks (Medicare)?  Both those programs are called entitlements, but they’re really not because we pay for them.  Must we pay for the corporations, too?

-Skip