Corporate Welfare Breeds Corruption

Chris Edwards

President Joe Biden said big corporations should pay their fair share, yet he increased corporate tax loopholes 92 percent. Biden promised to end trickle-down economics, yet he showered big corporations with the largest gusher of corporate welfare ever.

Just because many of the president’s subsidies are supposedly green does not exempt them from the inefficiencies, unfairness, and corruption that invariably accompany corporate handouts. Corporate lobbyists prey on venal and naive politicians to pass subsidy programs and then line up to fill their pockets.

A recent Associated Press article describes some of the corruption in Biden’s corporate subsidy programs. It reminds me of Solyndra, the solar company in bed with the Obama White House that stiffed taxpayers half a billion dollars.

Here are highlights from the AP:

As he campaigned for the presidency, Joe Biden promised to spend billions of dollars to “save the world” from climate change. One of the largest players in the solar industry was ready. Officials, board members and major investors in First Solar, the largest domestic maker of solar panels, donated at least $1.5 million to Biden’s successful 2020 bid for the White House. After he won, the company spent $2.8 million more lobbying his administration and Congress, records show — an effort that included high-level meetings with top administration officials.

… First Solar became perhaps the biggest beneficiary from $1 trillion in environmental spending enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in 2022 after it cleared Congress solely with Democratic votes. Since then, First Solar’s stock price has doubled and its profits have soared thanks to new federal subsidies that could be worth up to $10 billion over a decade. The success has delivered a massive windfall to a small group of Democratic donors who invested heavily in the company.

… First Solar offers an example of how that legislation, shaped by lobbyists and potentially influenced by a flood of campaign cash, can yield mammoth returns to the well-connected.

… Company officials cultivated a constituency with Democrats during President Barack Obama’s administration, which in turn subsidized them through billions of dollars in government-backed loans. When the Biden administration started writing rules to implement the Democrats’ new law, First Solar executives and lobbyists met at least four times in late 2022 and 2023 with administration officials, including John Podesta, who oversaw the measure’s environmental provisions.

… The company will benefit from billions of dollars in lucrative tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturers … Last December, First Solar agreed to sell roughly $650 million of these credits to a tech company — providing a massive influx of cash, courtesy of the US government.

… Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi was added to Forbes billionaires list in 2023 thanks to the skyrocketing value of his roughly 5% stake in First Solar, financial disclosures show. Ebrahimi, along with his wife and family, contributed at least $1 million to Biden’s election effort, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Corporate welfare is a bipartisan curse. But I agree with this op-ed by Stephen Ford that the Republican Party—even though leaning populist these days—has an opportunity to come out swinging against corporate welfare. “The GOP should embrace the most populist philosophy ever devised: economic freedom,” he says, not “corporate handouts, bailouts and carve-outs.”