Letter to the editor: We're bailing out corporations — again

There is one part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus that worries me: the $500 billion bailout to large corporations. They are partially responsible for today’s problems.

For the last decade, large corporations have had record profits while paying little in taxes. They have reduced our manufacturing capabilities and decimated the inventory system. They have created extreme inequality and a vulnerable economic system.

The way the bailout is written, the $500 billion could balloon to trillions. And again, the government could leak money to investors and not to the workers or the actual businesses. With our taxpayer money, they could increase dividends or increase mergers and acquisitions. There is no accountability written into this part of the stimulus.

It seems that every few years we have a disaster that requires middle America to bail out the 1%. First, this century was the Iraq War, where companies had a windfall. Then there was TARP, with no accountability for the big guys. As Elizabeth Warren said, you cannot have accountability when there is no record of where the money went.

Then we had President Trump’s tax cut, which went to the large corporations and the 1%. Businesses did not add employees. Instead, they cut employees and in some cases moved factories offshore.

In the last few years Pennsylvania has lost manufacturing jobs. And again we are giving taxpayer money to the people who have put profits over people, community, product and country.

Michael Garing

North Huntingdon