Rising Hegemon
The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.
The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies' tax bills.
The CEOs are part of a campaign run by the Peter Peterson-backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to spend at least $30 million pushing for a deficit reduction deal in the lame-duck session and beyond.
During the past few days, CEOs belonging to what the campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council -- most visibly, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell's David Cote -- have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.
As part of their push, they are advocating a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks" -- money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.
Yet the CEOs are not offering to forgo federal money or pay a higher tax rate, on their personal income or corporate profits. Instead, council recommendations include cutting "entitlement" programs, as well as what they call "low-priority spending."
Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.
Here's a suggestion...accept the fiscal responsibility as your own doing...AND higher taxes...or I modestly propose...
UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHERFUCKERS!
4 comments:
Works for me. I will oil up the guillotine.
remember when they used to be called pigs? now they are vampires or worse. they are not masters of the universe anymore.
blankfine(sp) ca be the first one we execute. or just take him money away.
or just take him money away.
Damn! That is really harsh. You are a cruel master/mistress.
For a very long time, I've been saying that the ultimate aim of corporate lobbying is to eventually not only eliminate corporate taxation, but to also create a net outflow from the Treasury to the multinationals (in effect, using taxpayer funds to subsidize profits).
We're very nearly there, and these guys in Fix the Debt think they really can make it happen. In the `50s and early `60s, corporate taxation accounted for something like 30% of federal revenues and, now, it's about 8% and dropping. These guys are heavy users of physical and educational infrastructure, depend heavily on the military to open and secure markets for them, are highly dependent upon government contracts, and yet, they want someone else to pay those costs.
Ah, well, the United States doesn't have third-world levels of corruption, mostly because when confronted by widespread corruption, the US government does its best to legalize it....
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