corporate welfare bum
noun Canadian informal
A business or business executive perceived to be exploiting tax loopholes or benefiting unduly from government subsidies or tax breaks: I’d like to see the corporate welfare bums pay their fair share of taxes...
- David Lewis, father of Canada's New Democratic Party, was railing against "corporate welfare bums" - big businesses who failed to pay their share of taxes - in 1972.
- The magazines he shaped are benefiting from heavy government subsidies and are, in fact, among the corporate welfare bums he hates so intensely.
- Who could have anticipated Government subsidies to worthless corporate welfare bums, amounting to $63 billion dollars.
Origin
1970s: popularized by Canadian politician David Lewis (1909–81) of the New Democratic Party during the 1972 federal election.