Tlaib: ‘Corporate Dems’ Resist Biden Welfare Blowout; She Was A 'Corporate Dem' Herself As State Rep

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib made news when she criticized certain U.S. Senators who might not support Joe Biden’s massive social welfare expansion bill, calling them “corporate Dems.” The U.S. House passed the bill on Friday.

In an interview on HBO, the Democrat from Detroit called out the Senators of her own party who might oppose the bill.

But as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives from 2009 to 2014, Tlaib agreed to give taxpayer-funded subsidies to corporate interests every time she was present and had the chance. During her three terms in the Michigan Legislature, there were nine such bills identified in a scorecard the Mackinac Center for Public Policy created. The scorecard on corporate welfare only includes votes that authorized actual payments to businesses, not other forms of special treatment, such as property tax abatements.

Tlaib was absent during one of the votes, which authorized $50 million in subsidies to makers of photovoltaic cells. She was, though, present and voted on the other eight subsidy bills meeting this scorecard’s criteria during her three terms in the state House. Taken together, those bills authorized up to $1.031 billion in cash payments to favored corporations and developers. The largest offered $365 million to companies promising to build electric car batteries in Michigan. Most of the projections behind that subsidy never came to pass.