Anonymous wrote:291 billion a year in federal, state and local taxpayer dollars to support social welfare.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html
How much a year for corporate welfare? Is social welfare really dwarfed by corporate welfare? Or are they both a big expense?
According to this article from the Federalist (note, source with an agenda, so take it with a grain of salt) -
http://thefederalist.com/2013/09/30/calculating-the-real-cost-of-corporate-welfare/
1) The Cato Institute estimates that the U.S. federal government spends $100 billion a year on direct subsidies and grants to US companies.
2) A New York Times investigation found that states, counties and cities give up over $80 billion each year to companies for business incentives at the State, County, and City levels.
3) The Tax Foundation has concluded that ‘special tax provisions’ cost taxpayers over $100 billion per year. Corporate benefits include items such as Graduated Corporate Income, Inventory Property Sales, Research and Experimentation Tax Credit, Accelerated Depreciation, and Deferred taxes.
(The article is a response to an article from the liberal group Common Dreams. The Federalist author discounts some additional items that Common Dreams cites as "corporate welfare" and then goes on to list some of his own pet peeves. The three points about are what they both agree on.)
So that adds to about $280M, which is about the same as the social welfare budget.
But we're not talking about the whole thing. We're talking about whether mothers should be prevented from having additional children while on welfare - so a very, very small slice of that $290M pie.