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A Spirit Airlines flight arrives at Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., April 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a strange conundrum: If a company gets too big and successful and dares earn too much money, the US government accuses it of being an evil monopoly and tries to break it up.<\/p>\n
And if it loses too much money, the government swoops in and bails it out with taxpayer dollars \u2014 as we\u2019ve seen multiple times now, from banking to the auto industry.<\/p>\n
Rewarding failure and punishing success isn\u2019t a very smart economic game plan.<\/p>\n
In the latest chapter of this saga, the federal government is reportedly about to provide a half-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout<\/a> to Spirit Airlines.<\/p>\n Aren\u2019t you excited to learn you may become a shareholder?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear how one bankrupt institution \u2014 the US government, $39 trillion in debt and counting \u2014 can bail out another one, in this case the nation\u2019s sixth-largest airline<\/a>, with less than 5% of the market.<\/p>\n This story is slightly complicated because Washington played a major role in Spirit\u2019s current financial predicament.<\/p>\n Three years ago, when Spirit was in severe distress, the \u201cjob-killer B\u2019s\u201d of the Biden Administration, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and old Joe himself, blocked a move that could have avoided today\u2019s crisis.<\/p>\n Neither of them has ever actually run a business, but they ruled out a merger between JetBlue and Spirit <\/a>on antitrust grounds \u2014 even though the combined airline would have less than 10% of the market.<\/p>\n It was a truly tragic intervention: The merger would have combined the fifth and sixth largest airlines, thus maintaining competition in the skies.<\/p>\n It would have benefited the shareholders of both companies and thousands of airline workers.<\/p>\n And it would have given millions of air travelers more choices against the industry big boys, American, Delta, Southwest and United.<\/p>\n I and many others predicted that Biden\u2019s call would end up in Spirit\u2019s bankruptcy<\/a> \u2014 and everyone would lose.<\/p>\n If a bailout is coming, we can add taxpayers to that list of losers.<\/p>\n Under the plan, Uncle Sam would reportedly give Spirit up to $500 million and the government would\u00a0\u201creceive warrants to take a potential significant stake\u201d in the company, keeping Spirit temporarily afloat.<\/p>\n But that first half-billion could be just the beginning: The deal could end up with the federal government owning 90% of a failing airline.\u00a0<\/p>\n Great \u2014 now we\u2019ll have the federal government playing the role of investment banker.<\/p>\n Federal bureaucrats will be picking winners and losers.<\/p>\n And the politicians have a long and inglorious history of picking losers.<\/p>\n Think of the hundreds of millions of dollars lost under President Barack Obama\u2019s so-called stimulus, when the government turned itself into a venture capital fund and \u201cinvested\u201d in companies like Solyndra<\/a> and Fisker Auto \u2014 celebrated solar panel and electric car manufacturers that went bust after huge infusions of tax dollars.<\/p>\n How many times have we been told that\u00a0Amtrak and the US Postal Service are about to become profitable?<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the $400 billion the feds in the last decade \u201cinvested\u201d in green energy \u2014 the rate of return on which was very close to zero.<\/p>\n