Top 44 Subsidies Quotes

Ex-Im Bank doles out billions of dollars of loans and insurance subsidies every year and has become the poster child for corporate cronyism in Washington. Think of the bank as food stamps for America’s Fortune 500 companies.

Government subsidies to elite private universities take the form of tax deductions for people who make charitable contributions to them.

Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.

The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance.

If candidates spend money on ads and other political speech and their opponents are rewarded with government handouts to attack them, that chills speech and is unconstitutional. Non-participating candidates certainly don’t volunteer to allow their opponents to receive taxpayer subsidies to bash them.

Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it.

These subsidies from four European governments, which include aircraft launch assistance, capital injections, debt forgiveness, have enabled Airbus to develop and range market airliners well below cost.

The government should move towards supporting aspirations and not entitlement. Subsidies supporting non-productive growth should be reduced.

Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking – a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.

I can understand where the oil company wants to deduct the cost of drilling a well. That’s one of the tax breaks for oil companies – the subsidies – they get to deduct the cost of the well the year you drill.

The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.

Our farmers and ranchers have never faced as many problems as they do today with drought, range fires, high gas prices and an ever tightening budget on agriculture subsidies.

We’ve seen filibusters to block judicial nominations, jobs bills, political transparency, ending Big Oil subsidies – you name it, there’s been a filibuster.

However imperfectly, subsidies for the poor do actually reduce hunger, ease suffering and create opportunity, while subsidies for the rich result in more private jets and yachts. Would we rather subsidize opportunity or yachts? Which kind of subsidies deserve more scrutiny?

The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods.

Subsidies and bailouts cannot compensate for uncertain or permanently diminished market access.

I don’t mind payin’ for the police and for streets and sanitation, or road work, bridges, trains, food subsidies and welfare. But I don’t wanna pay for bombs to fight proxy wars in the middle of nowhere against enemies in the night.

Subsidies on petroleum products and fertilizers should be phased out in a defined, time-bound manner. The resources that would get freed up could then be used to fund various social sector programmes in education, healthcare and other priority sectors.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that in 2016, the corporate income tax raised $300 billion in revenue, while what it called ‘targeted subsidies’ cost about $270 billion. In other words, Congress could eliminate the subsidies and cut the corporate rate nearly in half without any significant loss in revenue.

If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies.

Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form – praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa.

Yes, agriculture subsidies are far too generous. They need to be reined in because they cater to special interests while distorting free market competition. Yes, the farm laws are an anachronistic mess.

That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them.

In a time of serious budget deficits, immense war costs and a sluggish economy, we cannot afford to grant such outlandish subsidies to some of our Nation’s largest corporations.

We’ll never move beyond oil until we stop rewarding oil companies with ridiculous taxpayer subsidies and start making them pay for the harm they cause our families and our planet.

Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends. Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts.

Rich country protectionism – barriers, subsidies and support – mean that the world supply of agricultural goods is artificially increased and world prices depressed.

My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, you can hate the subsidies – I hate the subsidies, too – but you can’t hate solar panels. These are rocks that make electricity, so they are incapable of receiving your hate.

I’m very excited by biomass and biofuels. We have a company, KiOR, that turns biomass – for instance, wood chips – into gasoline. The potential value of this company is huge. It could compete with regular crude oil without subsidies.

When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I’d like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies.

I’m a liberal – I believe in subsidies for public goods and in regulations to curb harmful externalities, but neither of those things exist when it comes to parking.

President Obama, through health care reform, strengthened Medicare. How did he do that? Well, he found savings by cutting subsidies to insurance companies, ensuring we were rooting out waste and fraud, and he used those savings to put it back into Medicare.

To achieve policy stability and certainty, we need to establish a meaningful price on carbon and cut the billions of dollars spent each year on fossil-fuel subsidies, along with well-structured financial tools and rules.

While never the darling of pure free traders, measures to combat dumping, subsidies, and injurious import surges have always been deemed essential by open economies like the United States to maintain support for trade.

Exxon, one of the companies that has spent tens of millions of dollars denying climate change, denying any responsibility to deal with, taking government subsidies on a massive scale, now their ads are all about, ‘Oh, we want a clean future. We’re looking at clean energy and all that stuff.’

Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs – even when we benefit from them.

You can’t be elected president without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa, he was singing a different tune.

College has been oversold. It has been oversold to students who end up dropping out or graduating with degrees that don’t help them very much in the job market. It also has been oversold to the taxpayers, who foot the bill for subsidies that do nothing to encourage innovation and economic growth.

Rich people who own mansions on the beach shouldn’t get federal subsidies. If you want to stay there, take the risk.

The concept of UBI (universal basic income) is a good concept and when Arvind Subramanian had started it, I told him that Indian politicians will say continue the existing subsidies and give this over and above.

The government only gives subsidies for nitrogenous fertilisers. With the result, farmers do not apply balanced fertilisers.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a hand brake as we drive along the road to a sustainable energy future.

The people who deserve and need subsidies are those who are on average incomes and less.

Yes, college tuition is a problem for many young Americans, but it is a problem exacerbated by government subsidies and an overwhelming demand to get a college degree, despite high dropout rates.