Federal welfare are we know it

In his letter to the editor (BDN, Nov. 21), John Goldfine brings up some important issues about how the state is subsidizing SITEL in Aroostook County. With all the hubbub about welfare over the past year and with the end of federal welfare, we seem to have missed something.

Though the federal government has tightened up welfare for individuals and given control of the programs to the states plenty of welfare money is still flowing from federal and state pockets. The recipients are not the poor, however, but are often multi-million dollar, transnational corporations, and the reason for the payments is not a social safety net, but, supposedly, to stimulate the economy and make jobs.

Instances of corporate welfare abound. The U.S. Forest Service just the other day admitted to losing more than $15 million for the year because they let logging corporations take the timber in the White Mountains and other National Forests for much less than market price. The USFS even built the roads for them to use.

In the 1990s alone, $10 billion worth of U.S. government loans for arms sales have not been paid back and were written off, left for the taxpayers to pay. In addition, the federal government now spends an estimated $7.6 billion annually on activities to promote arms sales to foreign countries. President Clinton has even personally called the president of the United Arab Emirates twice in the past two years to push the saled of F-16 fighter jets, made by Lockheed Martin, the largest weapons producer in the U.S. taxpayers give more than $100 million each year in direct subsidies to western cattle ranchers that graze their livestock on the public lands that account for 41 percent of 11 western states. Only 30,000 permittees benefit from these subsidies, only two percent of U.S. beef comes from publicly ranched cattle, and these “ranchers” that hold public grazing permits include Texaco, Phelps Dodge and Anheiser-Busch. The list goes on.

The question remains, then, why does government subsidize certain things and what should and shouldn’t be subsidized? I presume most people would agree that the national and state government, i.e. the taxpayers, should pay for some things — for basic national security measures, for highways and roads, for basic education. These things benefit everone at least somewhat equally and contribute to the welfare of the country. But how do subsidies to timber companies, ranchers and huge defense contractors contribute to the general welfare? As former President Ronald Reagan said, “Those who receive special benefits and services from the federal government should be the ones to bear the costs of these services, not the general taxpayers.”

The only excuse for this is the one which has recently surfaced in relation to the subsidies for Bath Iron Works and SITEL. They produce jobs which are necessary for the communities where they are based. But if we’re going to give millions, or even billions, of dollars away, we should look past the narrow gain of a few new jobs and to the broader picture. Who gets the money from these jobs anyway?

Let’s say the new worker at SITEL goes out and spends her $15,600 salary. She goes to Wal-Mart to get household items, to McDonald’s for lunch, to Shop ‘n Save for groceries, to the Shell station for gas and puts down a payment for a new Chevrolet pickup. Not only is this woman being helped by her new job, but she is now helping all the people who work at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s (who, by the way, offer hardly any full-time jobs so they don’t have to pay benefits) by supporting them. But are all these jobs supporting the communities as much as they purport to be? Sure, the companies are paying wages — even if they are close to minimum wage — to all their employees. But most of the money which community members spend in these places does not go back into wages for locals, but exits the state and flows into the pockets of the corporate owners.

Corporations don’t need subsidies. Why should we be begging and bribing them to locate or stay in Maine if they produce only low paying jobs and really only benefit the corporate owners? General Motors’ sales in 1995 totaled $168.8 billion, four times the gross domestic product of Egypt. Shell’s sales were $109.8 billion and Wal-Mart’s were $93.6 billion ($1 billion more than Poland’s GDP), and the five heirs of Sam Walton are each worth more than $2 billion, placing them among the country’s top 20 wealthiest people. Do they need subsidies? I should think not.

Taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing them anymore than they should be subsidizing western fat-cat ranchers, immense defense contractors who are arming dozens of foreign countries with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, or large timber companies that export raw logs to Japan and then move to Mexico when the timber is gone. These things are simply not in the long-term interest of the general population.

What then can we do and where should tax monies be going?

How about if the Maine government began a program to help locally owned and operated businesses such as organic dairy farms, value-added wood products companies and independent logging operation that don’t use cut and run practices? Or how about giving the University of Maine’s ailing financial aid program a boost? Maybe then we could get some educated people who could figure out how to better stimulate Maine’s economy and get jobs that would actually do some good.

The money we give to the state should come back to us in some beneficial way. The money we give to the federal government should be used for the common good. Not for subsidizing immensely wealthy corporations. Let’s make our resources and taxes work for us, not against us. Erin Chalmers lives in Bar Harbor.