Subsidies

As Mitt Romney defends his record running a private equity firm, he frequently points to a fast-growing Indiana steel company, financed in part by Bain Capital, that now employs 6,000 workers. What Romney doesn't mention is that Steel Dynamics also received generous tax breaks and other subsidies provided by the state of Indiana and the residents of DeKalb County, where the company's first mill was built. The story of Bain and Steel Dynamics illustrates how Romney, during his business career, made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider to be "corporate welfare.

WASHINGTON - It's a deal that most businesses would relish: Buy an insurance policy to cover losses or falling prices, and the government will foot most of the bill. Such an arrangement has been enjoyed for more than a decade by the farmers who grow crops such as corn and soybeans, and the companies that insure them. And it's about to get even better. The farm bill now before Congress includes a provision - estimated to cost about $3 billion a year - that would help cover the losses farmers suffer before their crop insurance policies kick in. Those losses, termed deductibles, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars for a typical mid-size farm.

Congress is about to approve a new federal program to pay car owners up to $4,500 for trading in gas-guzzling automobiles for more fuel-efficient cars, to the applause of the struggling auto industry. But the program is drawing heavy criticism from an unlikely quarter: environmentalists who are sworn enemies of big, old clunkers that get poor mileage.

TEHRAN — On a recent trip to a city on the Persian Gulf, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood in the back of a pickup as it made its way through a thick crowd clamoring for his attention when an older, disheveled man began to shout at him. "Ahmadinejad, I am hungry, Ahmadinejad, I am hungry," he pleaded desperately. The man banged on the pickup's front window to get the notice of the president, who leaned forward as the two exchanged a few words. A young woman then climbed onto the hood of the vehicle and told the leader, "I have problems.

It was close to 2 a.m. when Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and others on a House-Senate conference committee saw just how much clout the oil industry had when it came to winning special tax breaks and other financial benefits from Congress. At issue was the 2005 Energy Policy Act — the largest energy bill in years. The committee chairman, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), a friend of the industry, had saved some big issues for the end: billions of dollars in tax and royalty relief to encourage drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and other offshore areas.

The White House is seizing on House Speaker John Boehner's surprising comments that lawmakers ought to "take a look at" eliminating some subsidies for oil and gas companies. In a letter fired off to congressional leaders on Tuesday, Obama said he was "heartened" by Boehner's remarks, which came in an ABC News interview and seemed to be a concession to Democrats who have long sought to abandon the subsidies. "Our political system has for too long avoided and ignored this important step, and I hope we can get together in a bipartisan manner to get this done," the president wrote in a letter circulated to the media.

Conservative rivals of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood firm Monday in their fight to prevent him from rapidly cutting government subsidies for basic staples and taking control of the billions in savings. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said lawmakers would not revise their decision to cut subsidies by $20 billion, half of what Ahmadinejad demanded. At issue is not just who controls the money saved but also whose supporters gain or lose a slice of government subsidies.

In a last-minute compromise seeking to secure a majority vote for a healthcare overhaul, House Democratic leaders agreed Saturday to essentially exclude abortion coverage from their bill except for insurance policies paid exclusively with private money. The amendment, offered just prior to the vote on the healthcare bill, passed 240 to 194. The compromise won immediate support from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which urged Catholics to "lend their full-throated support" to the Democrats' healthcare bill.

After last week's column on the insurance subsidy included in President Obama's stimulus package, we received quite a lot of mail asking more questions. That's understandable. The details are complicated. In a nutshell, some laid-off employees can get a 65% subsidy, for up to nine months, to help defray the cost of continuing their healthcare coverage through a program known as COBRA. The subsidy only applies to people who lost, or will lose, their jobs between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009.

Re "Airbusted," editorial, Oct. 12 Airbus is subsidized to build high-technology aircraft, which provides manufacturing and engineering jobs for Europeans. We subsidize tobacco farmers. Don't complain too much about government subsidies; if it weren't for them, we wouldn't have much aerospace work in California. Don't kid yourself: Government contracts are subsidies by a different name. PETE ALBERINI La Mirada

The American public is divided about whether to eliminate federal subsidies for any form of energy and is giving less support to nuclear power and U.S. funding of renewable energy, a new poll has found. Fifty-four percent of respondents opposed doing away with subsidies for oil, gas, coal, nuclear or renewable energy, while 47% favored the idea. Support for building more nuclear power plants has fallen dramatically, to 42% from 61% in 2008. The Yale-George Mason University poll being released Thursday found that 76% of Americans support regulating carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas pollutant and that two-thirds believe the U.S. should pursue policies to reduce its carbon footprint.

In a few months, the Los Angeles County Housing Authority will begin allowing rent subsidies to be granted to homeless ex-convicts on parole or probation. The move is controversial, with some critics complaining that it rewards criminals, giving them special treatment and moving them to the front of the line for the limited and much-sought-after subsidies. But that's shortsighted. Homeless ex-convicts, including many who committed only minor, nonviolent crimes, don't go away if they don't get housing aid. Although there are risks associated with the new rule, they're risks worth taking.

Last week, the Senate voted on a proposal by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez to end some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry. The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act was a curiously skimpy bill that targeted only oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas. Even so, the proposal didn't pass. But that hasn't stopped President Obama from calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz.

President Obama on Thursday morning urged Congress to “stand with the American people” by voting to end subsidies to oil companies. “Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits,” Obama said. “On top of these record profits, oil companies are also getting billions a year in taxpayer subsidies.” Members of Congress can either “stand with the big oil companies,” Obama said, “or they can stand with the American people.” The appearance in the Rose Garden came minutes ahead of a procedural vote in the Senate on a bill to repeal oil subsidies.

Ratcheting up the battle over a vital energy industry, the U.S. Commerce Department decided to impose tariffs on solar panels imported from China after concluding that manufacturers there received illegal government subsidies. The Commerce Department, in its preliminary finding over illegal subsidies, said solar panels imported from China — now dominating the U.S. market — would face a duty of 2.9% to 4.73%. The tariff is considerably smaller than what some had hoped for but nonetheless marks another step by the Obama administration to get tougher on trade with China.

With ex-presidents earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees and book deals, a bipartisan effort is underway in Congress to scale back taxpayer support for well-to-do former occupants of the Oval Office.   The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act seeks to amend a half-century-old law that sought to "maintain the dignity” of the office of the president. The proposal would provide a taxpayer supported pension of $200,000, about the same amount that they now receive.

Southern California's first major seawater desalination plant moved forward Tuesday when it won public subsidies that could eventually amount to $350 million. Years in the planning, the private San Diego County venture would be capable of producing enough water to supply about 100,000 homes. The Carlsbad project is the furthest along of a host of desalination plants under consideration on the California coast. Backers said Tuesday's vote by the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was critical to getting private financing, the plant's next hurdle.

When Mexico and the United States were entering a landmark free trade agreement 16 years ago, one thing was clear: Mexican farmers would initially find it difficult to compete with heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural products. The solution: Mexico created a special fund to dole out cash to the poorest and smallest farmers. Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. Today, the fund -- far from helping the neediest -- is providing large financial subsidies to the families of notorious drug traffickers and several senior government officials, including the agriculture minister.

The iPhone has been a huge hit for Apple Inc., helping send the company's stock to all-time highs and producing record-breaking profits. But for AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., it's breaking the bank. The three wireless carriers all found themselves answering to Wall Street in recent weeks for posting depressed quarterly earnings, and analysts pointed to the heavy cost of offering the iPhone as a culprit. The iPhone has become the single most popular smartphone in the U.S., and that has left the carriers trapped in a kind of Faustian deal: The more iPhones they sell, the more money they lose.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's bungled effort to raise the country's fuel prices to the market rate has hurt his international reputation as a potential reformer and infuriated a population tired of decades of rapacious government. The nation incurred almost $1.3 billion in economic losses during a nationwide strike that followed Jonathan's announcement Jan. 1 that the government was ending a fuel subsidy that kept gasoline prices low, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.