Reports: Legislative Leaders Approve Subsidies for China Hub

Legislators make the numbers add up.

​Word is that Republican leaders in the Missouri House and Senate have hammered out a deal to provide $360 million in tax credits to subsidize construction and flights for a proposed cargo hub at Lambert St. Louis International Airport.

The full legislature would have to approve the measure in a special session this summer. House Speaker Steve Tilley and Rob Mayer, Senate president pro tem, got to the agreement by capping tax credits elsewhere, particularly for historic and low-income developments.

The hub would begin receiving three flights a week from China and send three planes full of U.S. goods to China each week.

Let's see. That adds up to six flights a week. Six times 52 equals 312 flights a year. Divide that into $360 million and the subsidies for each flight in the first year would be a scant $1.1 million per airplane. Hmm.