This argument would be more convincing if these companies were actually spending bailout money on operations and employees, rather than, say, declaring bankruptcy, laying people off and giving millions of dollars to executives.

U.S. airlines spent 96% (!!) of their free cash flow in the last decade on stock buybacks [0]. That turned out to be a bad bet. Why don't the executives buy back the billions of dollars of stock they sold to the airlines, rather than asking the taxpayers to foot the bill?

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/u-s-airli...