Selective Welfare

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Looking more closely at the massive budget cuts proposed by the Republican Study Committee more closely, the “best” part comes in Title IV, when it comes time to cut corporate welfare. A decent chunk of the cuts come from repealing the Applied Research for Renewable Energy Sources Program, the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative Program, the Clean Coal Technology Program, and the FreedomCAR Program. All reasonable government programs to promote renewable energy—the sort of thing we need more, not less, of. But never mind that. The sum of these cuts runs to less than $1 billion. Meanwhile, of course, the $2.6 billion worth of recently-passed subsidies to oil and gas companies—”to encourage domestic oil and gas production”—went untouched.

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