Even if you love baseball, you probably don’t want to subsidize politicians sitting on their duffs, eating hot dogs and singing take me out to the ball game. But that’s what’ll happen if the mayor of our nation’s capitol gets his way.
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams is trying to get $340 million in public funds to build a new baseball stadium in Washington. The Washington Senators left town years ago, and the Mayor wants to make the Montreal Expos a D.C. team. But to get the franchise, the new owner has to build a new stadium. And the mayor wants taxpayers to foot the bill.
Now we should mention that Mayor Williams has not specifically asked for federal funds to build his stadium. But as the Tax Foundation points out, for every dollar that folks inside the Beltway pay out in taxes, they get back $6.44 in federal benefits.
So if D.C. runs short of funds building the stadium, you can bet they’ll tap into your tax dollars to balance the books. That’s why the mayor’s won the “porker of the month” award from the group Citizens against government waste, which said of the mayor’s plan: “Taxpayer-financed stadium building is corporate welfare, plain and simple.”
And that’s the Asman Observer.
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