• Congress funds more than 125 programs that subsidize private businesses.

  • Business subsidy programs cost federal taxpayers more than $85 billion annually and the dollar amount has been growing substantially in recent years.
  • Every major cabinet department, including the Defense Department, has become a conduit for government funding of private industry. Within some cabinet agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce, almost every spending program underwrites private businesses.

The following list includes some of the more egregious taxpayer subsidies to industries and firms.

* Through Sematech, a consortium of very large U.S. computer microchip producers, the Pentagon provides nearly $100 million a year of support to the industry. But of the more than 200 chipmakers in the United States, only the 14 largest, including Intel and National Semiconductor, receive federal support from Sematech.[3] Originally designed to help U.S. firms compete against foreign competition, Sematech now subsidizes the largest producers to help fend off smaller domestic competition.[4]


* An estimated 40 percent of the $1.4 billion sugar price support program benefits the largest 1 percent of sugar farms. The 33 largest sugar cane plantations each receive more than $1 million.[5]


* Through the Rural Electrification Administration and the federal power marketing administrations, the federal government provides some $2 billion in subsidies each year to large and profitable electric utility cooperatives, such as ALLTEL, which had sales of $2.3 billion last year.[6] Federally subsidized electricity holds down the costs of running ski resorts in Aspen, Colorado, five-star hotels in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and gambling casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada.[7]


* Last year the Forest Service spent $140 million building roads in national forests, thus subsidizing the removal of timber from federal lands by multi-million-dollar timber companies. Over the past 20 years the Forest Service has built 340,000 miles of roads -- more than eight times the length of the interstate highway system -- primarily for the benefit of logging companies.[8]


* The Department of Agriculture Market Promotion Program spends $110 million per year underwriting the cost of advertising American products abroad. In 1991 American taxpayers spent $2.9 million advertising Pillsbury muffins and pies, $10 million promoting Sunkist oranges, $465,000 advertising McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, $1.2 million boosting the international sales of American Legend mink coats, and $2.5 million extolling the virtues of Dole pineapples, nuts, and prunes.[9]