Charles Koch

Far too many well-connected businesses are feeding at the federal trough. By addressing corporate welfare as well as other forms of welfare, we would add a whole new level of understanding to the notion of entitlement reform.

When a company is not being guided by the products they make and what the customers need, but by how they can manipulate the system - get regulations on their competitors, or mandates on using their products, or eliminating foreign competition - it just lowers the overall standard of living and hurts the disadvantaged the most.

From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

The easy way to make money is to get special political privilege. From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.

When you start attacking cronyism and people's political interests, it gets nasty.

The best way to make money is to have more economic freedom, which is why we are one of the very few large companies that are consistently for it.

You pass a program and get people dependent on it, making it brutal to get rid of. The key is not letting it get started.

I don't want to dedicate my life to getting publicity.

Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

The successful companies try to keep the new entrants down. Now that's great for a company like ours. We make more money that way because we have less competition and less innovation. But for the country as a whole, it's horrible.

We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding. Any business that's economical, that can succeed in the marketplace, any form of energy, we're all for. As a matter of fact, we're investing in quite a number of them, ourselves - whether that's ethanol, renewable fuel oil.