During the second half of the 1990s, in the midst of one of the most sustained periods of economic growth and prosperity in U.S. history, the federal government paid out approximately $125 billion per year to corporations. Advocates applauded these payments as promoting "economic development" or as evidence of "public-private partnership." Critics denounced them as "corporate welfare." From the debates involving this issue there emerged no consistent definition of "corporate welfare," although a commonly accepted one is "any action by local, state or federal government that gives a corporation or an entire industry a benefit not offered to others." These advantages can come in many forms: governments regularly extended significant tax breaks to corporations, for example, including deals that permitted them to pay only 25 percent of their assessed property taxes, granted them the right to make purchases without paying sales tax, and...