Charles Koch backs Bernie Sanders on this one issue

Charles Koch agrees with Sanders on one issue.

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube.com/CBS Sunday Morning)

published 19 February 2016

Bernie Sanders is right about at least one thing, argues libertarian billionaire Charles Koch in a Washington Post op-ed Friday. Koch wryly notes that Sanders "often sounds like he's running as much against me as he is the other candidates," but values the senator's emphasis on combating corporate welfare and crony capitalism:

The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.I agree with him. [Washington Post]

As for their own businesses, the Kochs have long lobbied against even the aspects of corporate welfare that benefit their bottom line, like the ethanol mandate. Until their efforts succeed, however, Koch Industries avails itself of some incentives to avoid "competitive disadvantage in the current marketplace" where other corporations have no such scruples.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.