The CATO institute had some interesting numbers on individual welfare and corporate welfare a few years back. I think it was right around the time Bush started his second term. Might Google it and see if you can find it. Corporations get a ton of government money. At a time like this where we're (hopefully) pulling out of a depression there's likely to be a ton of people collecting benefits of some kind. When the economy is better the numbers generally shift to more corporate welfare. Often corporations get breaks with the promise of jobs for the community and many times they fail to make good on those commitments. Back in the mid 90's I remember Intel demanding massive breaks from Washington County, Oregon or they were going to close down and move... *gasp!* overseas. That really seemed to be the mantra for many 90's corporations- "give us what we want or we're shipping your jobs to China." Intel claimed if they got the breaks they wanted they'd expand, hire more people. They got the breaks and within a year cut the labor force. The county sued. After that I took another job and moved to a warmer dryer climate so I don't know what became of the whole mess. I know a friend of mine later went to work at the Intel "campus" and makes a damn good living. Doesn't hurt that his wife work down the street at Nike.

Corporate welfare and fraud have always puzzled me. Why doesn't the right hammer away at this like it does personal welfare benefits and fraud. When a person defrauds the government they get jack squat to what a corporation does. Reagan famously claimed this about a woman-
"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

Even if that were true, which it turns out it wasn't, it would be nothing compared to the fraud being committed by defense contractors. Look at the money pored into Iraq and Afghanistan and the amount that was found to be nothing more then a rip-off. It would take a several million people claiming false personal benefits to even come close to the amount of fraud committed by corporations.

I'm all for getting rid of fraud, though I see no way to completely wipe it out. But why not go after all of it instead of just part of it?