Both major political parties in the U.S. often tout smallbusinesses as the backbone of the nation's economy. A new report, though, suggeststhat government spending on economic development doesn't necessarily reflectthat rhetoric.

The study released Tuesday from the taxpayer watchdog groupGood Jobs First finds that between 80 and 96 percent of state economicdevelopment awards in the last five years went to large corporations ratherthan small business, even though the awards were supposedly available to bothsmall and large companies. The group analyzed more than 4,200 economicdevelopment grants in 14 states and found "a profound bias against smallbusinesses" -- which it defined as locally owned enterprises with fewer than100 employees.

This isn't the first analysis that has tracked how taxpayerlargesse disproportionately flows to major corporations, and not to smallbusiness.

GovernmentExecutive reported that the American Small Business League found in 2013"that of the top 100 companies receiving the highest-valued small businessfederal contracts" from the Small Business Administration, "79 were largecompanies that exceeded the SBA's small-business size standards, five wereanomalous and 16 were legitimate small businesses." The watchdog group's analysisin 2014 found "over 160 Fortune 500 firms were the actual recipients offederal small business contracts" in 2014.

Corporategroups and officialsat the Export-Import Bank, which provides credit for foreign purchasers of U.S.goods, have touted the government-supported bank as a major supporter of smallbusinesses. But researchers at George Mason University's MercatusCenter have documented that "less than 20 percent of all Ex-Im Bank fundinggoes to small business" and that the bank's support "backs less than 0.3percent of all small business jobs and less than 0.04 percent of all smallbusiness establishments."

Reutersalso reported that the bank "has mischaracterized potentially hundreds of largecompanies and units of multinational conglomerates as small businesses." Thenews service discovered that "companies owned by billionaires like WarrenBuffett and Mexico's Carlos Slim, as well by Japanese and Europeanconglomerates, were listed as small businesses" by the bank.

To view full article, click here: http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/taxpayer-subsidies-flowing-mostly-big-business-not-small-business-report-2147705