With a new plea to the Obama administration, the steel industry has become the latest lobbying group looking to get their hands on taxpayer funds. The CEO of Nucor Corporation (NUE)-one of the largest steel conglomerates-is lobbying the incoming Obama administration to advance a $1 trillion infrastruture package that has “in every provision a ‘buy America’ clause.”

This is nothing new. The steel industry has lobbied for and received special treatment for decades. With trillions in bailout and stimulus money floating to anyone who begs the most convincingly, the industry is stepping to the plate to take some of the spoils. Here’s a great explanation taken from the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies:

Over the past three decades, U.S. steel producers have been shielded from foreign competition by quotas, voluntary export restraints, minimum price undertakings, and hundreds of antidumping, countervailing duty, and safeguards measures. Yet the industry’s problems persist. Why? Because rather than strengthen the industry, protectionism fosters uneconomic capacity and discourages unsuccessful firms from the otherwise rational decision to exit the market. Continued operation of inefficient mills produces excess output, which suppresses prices, and jeopardizes prospects for healthier firms and their employees.

No matter what government does to give special treatment to steel, no matter how much money they give any of these companies, the industry will end up right where they are now, begging for more money in the future. No amount of money or artificial restriction to foreign competition will fix the industry’s problems.

With every new beneficiary stepping up to the federal trough we must remember we are weakening the long run health of our country. The federal government has assumed unprecedented liabilities and its balance sheet is becoming embarrassingly weak; this will have implications for our currency, which affects everyone. Corporate welfare has the same bad effects on business as social welfare does for individuals: we reduce incentives to alter inefficient behavior and keep doing the same bad things.

It started with financials-insurance companies, banks, investment banks-moved to retailers, automotives, commercial real estate developers, municipal governments, and has now moved to steel. Where is this corporate welfare theft going to end? With America’s bankruptcy.

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