CEI Joins Rep. Kasich and Broad Coalition to “End Corporate Welfare as We Know It”

Denouncing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) as “a silly distortion of global financial markets whose worst human consequences are in the third world,” Competitive Enterprise Institute President, Fred L Smith, Jr. will speak on the elimination of this program as part of the Stop Corporate Welfare (SCW) Coalition's “Dirty Dozen.”

The press conference will be held at 10:30 AM in Room 210 Cannon House Office Building.

“Federal spending programs often are harmful to the ecology as well as the economy. The economies and the ecologies of the Third World have been ravaged by fiscally irresponsible projects that no capitalist would ever have underwritten. The First responsibility of a federal government that fashions itself a Friend of Nature is to pledge itself first to Do No Harm!” says Smith.

CEI joins a broad coalition to fight corporate welfare which includes such disparate groups as: Citizens Against Government Waste, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Americans for Tax Reform, Public Citizen, National Taxpayers Union, Friends of the Earth, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Corporate Welfare Project and the Cato Institute.

The coalition was formed last year and successfully blocked the doubling of funding to OPIC. This year it has generated twelve targets for elimination. In addition to OPIC, the following programs are targeted: Rural Utilities Service, USDA's Market Access Program, Timber roads in National Forests, the Animas La Plata water project, the Department of Energy's Pyroprocessing, Fossil Energy Research and Development, Clean Coal Technology Programs, the Appalachian Regional Commission roads program, the International Monetary Fund's General Agreement to Borrow and Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, and the highway demonstration program.

“The unusual alliance here today is suggestive of the growing consensus on the value of trimming the corporate welfare state. Getting rid of corporate welfare will strengthen our market economy but it will also prove a boon to consumers and the environment,” Smith added.

For more information, contact James Sheehan at (202) 331-1010.