Adrienne Evans, United Action for Idaho
About Adrienne Evans, United Action for Idaho:
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Storiesby Adrienne Evans, United Action for Idaho
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In 2004, Congress passed and President Bush signed a “tax holiday” for America’s largest corporations. The thinking was that if corporations could bring back, or “repatriate” funds they were holding in off-shore accounts, that money could be used to hire new workers.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Turns out, 92 cents of every dollar corporations brought back to the U.S. didn’t go to hiring American workers, but rather ended up in the pockets of CEOs and shareholders through bloated compensation packages, stock buybacks and bigger dividends.
Example: the top five executives at Johnson & Johnson, which laid off 9,900 American workers since their last “holiday,” saw their pay increase by $33 million a year in just three years. For the CEOs, this really was a holiday.
Now guess what? They’re back. Lobbyists for many of the nation’s largest corporations are telling Congress that if they can just have one more tax holiday, one more tax break, they will bring home hundreds of billions of dollars and use the cash to put Americans back to work.
If only.
There are a couple of problems with the corporate lobbyists’ way of thinking. For starters, companies already are sitting on $348 billion in cash reserves already in the United States, and they are not using that money to hire.
Second, another corporate tax holiday would cost taxpayers $79 billion over the next ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. It would increase the deficit and create few jobs.
It’s clear why corporations are trying to fool us again – massive profits. At first glance, it’s less clear is why Congress would even consider such an outrageous request.
Until you follow the money.
A new report recently issued by the nonpartisan groups Public Campaign and USAction found that 20 of the nation’s largest corporations have spent $1 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying Congress since the last time they got this corporate tax giveaway. The amount of money spent solely on lobbying is staggering -- these 20 companies spent roughly $365,638 per day lobbying in Washington since 2005, including weekends. General Electric alone spent $164 million in lobbying and its executives and PAC gave $13 million in campaign cash, according to analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Pfizer spent $94 million lobbying and made $9 million in campaign contributions.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: American jobs and profits are shipped overseas by huge corporations who use their clout and cash to push Congress to pass corporate tax giveaways, while increasing the deficit and making the wealthiest Americans even richer. Talk about government of, by and for the one percent.
What can Congress do instead? A better way would be for Congress to close the loophole that encourages companies to ship profits overseas in the first place, and invest that money into putting Americans to work, educating our kids, repairing our infrastructure, and making our homes and offices energy efficient. It’s time to put America back to work.
