Quotes About Subsidies

#1. 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.

Charles Koch

#2. If climate change issues are not adequately addressed - if we keep running those nice energy subsidies, if the price on carbon is not adequately set, if policymakers don't have it on their radar screens - then financial stability in the medium and long-term is clearly at stake.

Christine Lagarde

#3. Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

P. J. O'Rourke

#4. 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.

Sebastian Coe

#5. 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.

Vaclav Klaus

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

Elizabeth Warren

#7. 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.

Zalmay Khalilzad

#8. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#9. Even climate action at home looks suspiciously like socialism to them; all the calls for high-density affordable housing and brand-new public transit are obviously just ways to give backdoor subsidies to the undeserving poor.

Naomi Klein

#10. In order for Obamacare's cost structure to work, millions of Americans must sign up to pay inflated prices; that would help pay for the subsidies to cover insurance company costs on those with pre-existing conditions.

Ben Shapiro

#11. Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.

William O. Douglas

#12. Liberals fostered the subsidies that have converted so many citizens to helplessness. They have made high taxes and big government a way of life. They have corrupted the politicians into believing that in order to be elected to office, they must dispense benefits.

James Cook

#13. When government taxes and regulates, what is seen are the visible effects of government contracts, grants, and subsidies. What is not seen are all of the property, business, and jobs that would have been created if citizens were left with the right to choose.

John Pugsley

#14. Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers.

Charles Koch

#15. Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register, it's charged to the environment or to the public purse in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your health.

Michael Pollan

#16. Everybody says they want to have private providers and we're saying fine. Let the states negotiate on behalf of a population in your state to drive down your costs. Don't just give subsidies to insurance companies for expensive insurance.

Maria Cantwell

#17. 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.

Matthew Yglesias

#18. The whole tax code should be looked at, all the way from farm subsidies to carried interest to - to corporate loopholes, because we really need to raise more revenue.

Stephen Pagliuca

#19. As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains.

John Moody

#20. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.

Ayn Rand

#21. Government does the least good and the most harm through subsidies.

James Cook

#22. Our obsessive focus on college schooling has blinded us to basic truths. College is a place, not a magic formula. It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most - not to the students, but to everyone else.

Alex Tabarrok

#23. Any time you read that your government is erecting tariff barriers, supporting threatened industries with subsidies, or interfering in any way with free trade between individuals or nations, you must realize that your standard of living is being lowered as a result.

John Pugsley

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

Robert Reich

#25. We right now give $15 billion every year as subsidies to private insurers under the Medicare system. Doesn't work any better through the private insurers. They just skim off $15 billion.

Barack Obama

#26. 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.

Stephanie Cutter

#27. It requires heavy-duty interventions: sweeping bans on polluting activities, deep subsidies for green alternatives, pricey penalties for violations, new taxes, new public works programs, reversals of privatizations - the list of ideological outrages goes on and

Naomi Klein

#28. 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.

Grover Norquist

#29. 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.

George Will

#30. The corporation is the dominant and dominating institution of our time. Governments identify growth and development with commercial corporations and shower them with subsidies, tax privileges, and appropriate labour legislation and market support to attract a commitment and investment.

Eric Kierans

#31. Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support, the greater it curtails human freedom.

William O. Douglas

#32. Lobbyists know that a 0 percent tax rate on capital income is not, in fact, the lowest possible rate. There can be negative tax rates. There can be subsidies. There can be allowances for depreciation. Lobbyists are adaptive creatures.

Joel Achenbach

#33. Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.

Mikhail Gorbachev

#34. The Jacksonians were libertarians, plain and simple. Their program and ideology were libertarian; they strongly favored free enterprise and free markets, but they just as strongly opposed special subsidies and monopoly privileges conveyed by government to business or to any other group.

Murray Rothbard

#35. One answer is that the town's elected officials thought that the project served a public purpose and that the various subsidies and favors were worth the price. But they may or may not have thought this.

Michael Kinsley

#36. 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.

Austan Goolsbee

#37. 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.

Charles Koch

#38. Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?

Ralph Nader

#39. Private charity discourages poverty while public subsidies encourage it.

James Cook

#40. In almost every enterprise, government has provided business with opportunities for private gain at public expense. Government nurtures private capital accumulation through a process of subsidies, supports, and deficit spending and an increasingly inequitable tax system.

Michael Parenti

#41. China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the United States, currency manipulation, and forgiveness of loans by its government banks.

Virginia Foxx

#42. For too long, the system has been biased in favor of oil and gas developers: sweetheart lease deals, generous subsidies and a regulatory process so slanted in favor of Big Oil that often permit reviews are simply waived.

Chellie Pingree

#43. If Federal Reserve loans are subsidies, it doesn't show up in the federal budget.

Elizabeth Warren

#44. When corporations get special handouts from the government, subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden expenses, and government has less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything else you need.

Robert Reich

#45. If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

Milton Friedman

#46. Energy markets can be thought of as suffering from appendicitis due to fossil fuel subsidies. They need to be removed for a healthy energy economy.

Fatih Birol

#47. We need to cut subsidy leakages, not subsidies themselves.

Narendra Modi

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

Michael Pollan

#49. I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly ... they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.

Ian Bremmer

#50. The ultimate objective of subsidies should be to empower the poor, to break the cycle of poverty, and become foot-soldiers in our war on poverty.

Narendra Modi

#51. 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?

Nicholas Kristof

#52. 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.

Ron Kind

#53. 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.

Alex Tabarrok

#54. Just 8% of the $409bn spent on fossil-fuel subsidies in 2010 went to the poorest 20% of the population.

Fatih Birol

#55. 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.

Juan Williams

#56. Do you realize that $150 billion of our tax money is given to the corporations, unions and wealthy people for tax breaks, special subsidies and special regulations? That money would be available for health and education and building bridges.

Doris "Granny D" Haddock

#57. I am a free market Republican. I am against subsidies, in most cases.

Rudy Giuliani

#58. The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect.

Mark Shields

#59. The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans have failed to bring up comprehensive energy reform or any piece of legislation for that matter that would lower gas prices, opting instead to give massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry.

Rosa DeLauro

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

Uday Kotak

#61. 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.

John Sununu

#62. As it is, the grotesque distortions of the global market mean that for every dollar the West dispatches to Africa in the form of aid, two dollars are clawed back through subsidies and tariff barriers: a monumental rip-off by the rich as they instruct the poor to accept 'free' trade or else.

Jonathan Dimbleby

#63. Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.

Mark Bittman

#64. 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.

Baba Kalyani

#65. You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies?

Lee Child

#66. Jazz isn't as profitable for labels like Hip hop or Rap. Jazz needs subsidies to continue, just like European classical works of Bach and Beethoven are subsidized.

Jimmy Heath

#67. It is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.

Tony Benn

#68. None of the people who wrote Obamacare want anything to do with it. None of the people responsible for Obamacare can afford it. They all want subsidies. None of the people that gave us Obamacare have any desire to actually go to HealthCare.gov and sign up. That's for you and me to have to do.

Rush Limbaugh

#69. The easy way to make money is to get special political privilege. From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

Charles Koch

#70. I don't owe my success to state subsidies but to a faithful public which has sustained me.

Eric Rohmer

#71. Businessmen are notable for a peculiarly stalwart character, which enables them to enjoy without loss of self-reliance the benefits of tariffs, franchises, and even outright government subsidies.

Herbert J. Muller

#72. Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies.

Immanuel Wallerstein

#73. 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.'

Thomas Massie

#74. The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

Thomas Sowell

#75. At the very least, people who get subsidies should have to get up in the morning and do something, even if it's a make work job. But most liberals would oppose even this simple test of responsibility.

James Cook

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

Robert McChesney

#77. It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government - education, food, rent subsidies - are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.

Elizabeth Strout

#78. Giving subsidies is a two-edged sword. Once you give it, it's very hard to take away subsidies. There's a political cost to taking away subsidies.

Najib Razak

#79. 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.'

David Suzuki

#80. 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.

Norm Dicks

#81. Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill.

Nicholas Kristof

#82. 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.

Lupe Fiasco

#83. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.

Ludwig Von Mises

#84. Logging is an industry driven solely by greed. It prospers with government support and subsidies, and it is accelerating its rate of destruction, so that Tasmania is now the largest hardwood chip exporter in the world.

Richard Flanagan

#85. The American Dream, coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else, has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#86. it is easier to mock and deride individual fat people than to fix food deserts, school lunches, corn subsidies, inadequate or nonexistent public transportation, unsafe sidewalks and parks, healthcare, mental healthcare, the minimum wage, and your own insecurities.

Lindy West

#87. 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.

Michael McCaul

#88. When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

Henry Hazlitt

#89. Subsidies have changed the way the nation behaves.

James Cook

#90. Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization to live by its wits rather than to rely on capricious subsidies or non-economic-based regulation to fuel my business.

Clayton Christensen

#91. If you care about your personal liberty, you'll be cautious when you feel comfortable, blame all the illegal immigrants for everything. What you need to do is attack their benefits: no free education, no free subsidies, no citizenship, no birthright citizenship.

Ron Paul

#92. Most of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies.

Bill McKibben

#93. Subsidies are hugely important; they represent America's de facto energy policy.

Jeff Goodell

#94. It's a vain hope to believe that people will voluntarily turn their back on government subsidies.

James Cook

#95. 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.

Dan Benishek

#96. If [modern artists] hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

#97. Subsidies are a shell game, not a net addition to national wealth.

Thomas Sowell

#98. It is only with government help - in the form of subsidies, restrictions on potential rivals, and the like - that business can "exploit" the public in any meaningful sense. That

Thomas E. Woods Jr.

#99. I love when problems have simple solutions. Cold medicine. Umbrellas. Condoms. Tax incentives & subsidies attracting favored industries.

Greg Fitzsimmons

#100. Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy. This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.

Jose Angel Gurria