Getty Images News / Spencer Platt / Staff
âTo talk about doing serious cutbacks to entitlements, that’s out of order. The first thing we have to get rid of is entitlements for the wealthy, and at the same time, open up the economy to the disadvantaged. You can’t start taking away benefits if people don’t have any opportunities.â1
These are words you might expect from Bernie Sanders, or Jeremy Corbyn. Or someone on the Left at least. You probably wouldnât expect them to be the words of Charles Koch, one half of the infamous Koch brothers, and number eight on Forbesâ 2017 Billionaires list.
Yet Charles Koch has for decades been one of the loudest voices against crony capitalism, or what he refers to as âcorporate welfareâ. He sees it as âdestroying opportunities for the disadvantaged and creating welfare for the rich.â2 Charles Koch vehemently believes that markets should be free â to innovate and to fail â and that government intervention in the form of subsidies, tax cuts and complex regulation are harmful. And while his anti-crony capitalism stance is staggeringly hypocritical given his lobbying spend â more on that later â it doesnât make him wrong.
The US Government Accountability Office reported that, in 2011, corporate tax expenditures cost $181 billion in lost tax revenue.3 Last year they reported that in each year between 2006 and 2012 âat least two-thirds of all active corporations had no federal income tax liabilityâ.4 Thereâs various reasons for that, but among them they name tax deductions and incentives. The Washington Post has dubbed the annual âtax extendersâ bill process â which sees Congress extend expiring tax provisions â a âfull-employment exercise for lobbyistsâ.5
âCorporate welfareâ in America can be seen in numerous sectors â from renewable energy subsidies (maintained well beyond seed-funding) to financial services tax loopholes (âcarried interestâ, which enables hedge fund managers to pay less tax, is one example). Market-distorting sugar subsidies and protections have on average kept US sugar prices 64-92% above world prices and cost consumers around $3.7 billion. A paper by Harvard Business School points out that sugar production makes up just 1.9% of the value of all US crop production, yet the sugar industry accounts for more than one-third of lobbying spend by crop producers.6 All of these examples benefit the producer over the consumer and the powerful over Charles Kochâs âdisadvantagedâ.
While Democrat and Republican politicians alike are cosying up to vested interests â remember itâs not just big business, unions spend upwards of $45 million on lobbying each year, and spent $207 million on the 2016 election campaign7 â Charles Koch is putting his money where his mouth is. In 2014 Koch Industries wrote to Congress opposing the tax extenders billâs reinstatement of âcorporate subsidiesâ, saying the company âoppose[s] ALL subsidies, whether existing or proposed, including programs that benefit usâ.8 Charles Koch has also set his mighty political machine against the proposed âborder adjustment taxâ â which would effectively tax imports while subsidising exports. As a domestic producer, Koch told Freakanomics radio it would âmake us over a billion dollars a year.â9
But the Koch brothers don’t quite preach what they practise
Of course, lobbying on the scale of the Koch brothers is a luxury that the âdisadvantagedâ canât afford â it is itself a key part of the crony capitalism the brothers say they abhor. In 2015 an investigation by Politico highlighted the sheer scale of the Kochâs shadow political operation â and it is jaw-dropping.10 Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is their main group, but there are numerous spin-offs and associated bodies. All in all their machine was found to employ three and a half times as many people as the Republican National Committee and its congressional campaign arm. In 2014, Politico reported, AFP and its foundation had a budget of $104 million. Freedom Partners Action Fund, another part of the machine, spent $31.5 million during the 2016 election cycle.11 In a long-read in The New Yorker Jane Mayer provides a history of Koch spending.12 As well as highlighting the anti-environmental regulation activities of some of the Koch-funded groups, she details the brothersâ investment in think tanks and universities who share their ideological perspective.
It is this alignment of ideology and self-interest that in 2004 led the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy to claim:
âthese foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries. For example, the foundations supported the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. Each of these organisationsâin its own wayâworks to limit or remove government regulation and taxation of the industrial sector.â13
Action against crony capitalism must apply to all
No doubt such extensive involvement with non-profits and third-party interest groups should concern any defender of open democracy. But there is equally no doubt that the Kochs are as much pariahs for their dislike of big government and taxes as their well-funded political activities.
Mayer mentions in passing that âOf course, Democrats give money tooâ and cites the $100 million a year spend of George Sorosâ Open Society Institute. That, she implies, is OK â because his âspokesmanâ explains the expenditure is not self-interested. âLiberalâ spend is afforded 400 words in an almost 10,000-word critique of the Kochâs âideological networkâ. Just last week, The Center for Responsive Politics detailed the role of âdark moneyâ in the 2016 election for Colorado stateâs House of Representatives.14 Eighteen Democratic candidates received money from the third-party group Common Sense Values. Started just ahead of the elections and closed just after, the Center points out it raised $2.5 million in five months. Following the money trail reveals a murky web of donors â though left-leaning unions and social welfare organisations rather than big business. Hilary Clintonâs 2016 Presidential campaign coffers were boosted by almost $85 million from the Securities and Investment industry â essentially Wall Street â and $19 million from non-profits.15 The TV, Music and Movies industry donated more than $16 million to Clinton groups.
Such vast expenditure and reach, aimed at influencing politicians and the policy and regulatory decisions they make, is unquestionable crony capitalism. It doesnât matter which side of the partisan divide it comes from. This is the real threat to prosperity for all. As John Kerry said in his farewell speech to the Senate:
âThe alliance of money and the interests it representsâŚis steadily silencing the voice of the vast majority of Americans who have a much harder time competing, or who canât compete at all.â16
The time and energy spent on hating the Koch brothers and their Libertarian politics would be better spent on breaking the stranglehold of big business and big unions; on taking the Kochs at their word and destroying âcorporate welfareâ. Now that really would be a win for the âdisadvantagedâ.
***
FURTHER READING AND LISTENING
Stephen Dubner, âWhy Hate the Koch Brothers? (Part 1)â, Freakonomics, podcast, 21 June 2017
Stephen Dubner, âWhy hate the Koch Brothers (Part 2)â, Freakonomics, podcast, 22 June 2017
Charles Koch Opens Up About Politics, Business Innovation and Climate Change, Fortune interview, 11 July 2016
Jane Mayer, âCovert operations. The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obamaâ, The New Yorker, 30 August 2010
Kenneth Vogel, âHow the Koch network rivals the GOPâ, Politico, 30 December 2015
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