Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Have you heard about the Campaign to Fix the Debt? It sounds like an initiative that our country needs at this time. Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, said the campaign “presents itself as a grassroots, bipartisan organization that is committed to lowering our debt. It sounds good, especially in today’s environment of extreme partisanship and political maneuvering.” Mackenzie warns, however, that Fix the Debt’s “major contribution to the conversation over the fiscal cliff is that while the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations should be off the table, Americans’ retirement security and health care most definitely should [not] be.”
The Institute for Policy Studies claims that the Fix the Debt initiative is driven by business and is actually using the fear of going over the fiscal cliff “as a cover for tax-code changes that would damage our economy.” The institute found that Fix the Debt “has raised $60 million and recruited more than 80 CEOs of America’s most powerful corporations to lobby for a debt deal that would reduce corporate taxes and shift costs onto the poor and elderly.”
Scott Klinger, co-author of a report produced by the institute titled The CEO Campaign to “Fix” the Debt said, “The ‘Fix the Debt’ CEOs are trying to pass themselves off as noble leaders who are willing to compromise in order to save America from financial ruin. In reality, the campaign is a Trojan horse concealing massive corporate tax breaks that would make our debt situation much worse.”
Here are some of the findings of the institute’s report:
- The 63 Fix the Debt companies that are publicly held stand to gain as much as $134 billion in windfalls if Congress approves one of their main proposals — a “territorial tax system.” Under this system, companies would not have to pay U.S. federal income taxes on foreign earnings when they bring the profits back to the United States.
- The CEOs backing Fix the Debt personally received a combined total of $41 million in savings last year thanks to the Bush-era tax cuts. The top CEO beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts in 2011, Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, saved $9.9 million on the Bush tax cuts. The private equity fund leader reaped $215 million in taxable income last year just from vested stock.
- Of the 63 Fix the Debt CEOs at publicly held firms, 24 received more in compensation last year than their corporations paid in federal corporate income taxes. All but six of these firms reported U.S. profits last year.
The Institute for Policy Studies says that “corporations leading this campaign are contributing to Americans’ retirement insecurity by funneling enormous sums into their CEO retirement accounts while underfunding their employee pension funds.” It released another report titled A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts. That report analyzed the retirement policies of US corporations leading the campaign to Fix the Debt. Here are some of the reports key findings:
- The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who lead publicly held companies have amassed an average of $9 million in their company retirement funds. A dozen have more than $20 million in their accounts. If each of them converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life.
- The Fix the Debt CEO with the largest pension fund is Honeywell’s David Cote, a long-time advocate of Social Security cuts. His $78 million nest egg is enough to provide a $428,000 check every month after he turns 65.
- Forty-one of the 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.
Christina Wilkie and Ryan Grim (Huffington Post) wrote that the 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.” They also wrote that the companies represented by executives working on the debt campaign “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.”
They added that recently “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.”
Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the report, The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks, talked with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about the debt campaign and the CEOs involved in the deficit talks. Anderson told Goodman that they were “doing a massive media and lobbying blitz, portraying themselves as the reasonable ones, because they’re calling for both raising revenues and cutting spending. But if you look at the details of their tax plan, you see that they are really just a Trojan horse. They’re pushing for the same old tax breaks for corporations that they’ve been pushing for for about a decade.”
She continued, “And we looked at one of them, which is they want a permanent exemption from U.S. taxes for all of their foreign earnings. And we calculated that the companies in this campaign stand to gain a windfall of as much as $134 billion, if they get this corporate tax break through. And so, people should be very wary of this big ad campaign that they’re about to see in their newspapers across the country. This is just one more corporate attack on our fair taxation system.”
Lloyd Blankfein is the Face of Class Warfare
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Proposes Cutting Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security
Wealthy CEOs Want Tax Breaks, Cuts to Poor and Elderly
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Fix the Debt sounds promising, but the authors- the CEOs- broke it (Nolan Chart)
Fix The Debt CEOs Shorting Their Employees’ Retirement Funds (Crooks and Liars)
The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks (Institute for Policy Studies)
A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts (Institute for Policy Studies)
Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam’s Pocket (Institute for Policy Studies)
CEO Council Demands Cuts To Poor, Elderly While Reaping Billions In Government Contracts, Tax Breaks (Huffington Post)
‘Fix The Debt’ CEOs Underfund Employee Retirement, Demand Cuts For Elderly (Huffington Post)
As Talks Begin on “Fiscal Cliff,” Report Warns “Fix the Debt” a Front for More Corporate Bailouts (Democracy Now!)
MacKenzie: Fix the Debt would do so on backs of the middle class (Nashua Telegraph)
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/fix-debt-ceos-shorting-their-employee While shorting their employees pension funds, the CEOS complain that Social Security benefits are too generous.
Elaine M, Fantastic article and links.
“This new Wall Street movement, which includes Republicans and plenty of Democrats, is hitting the airwaves, hosting roundtables, gathering at lavish fundraising fêtes, hiring public relations experts, and traveling around the country to push its agenda.”
It seems as if the “Sugar Daddies” of the Tea Party are coming out of their
closets and trying to gather more plebiscites.
I suggest even more transparency and light be shone on these Masters of Hoard. Call them what they are.
…..”The Me Party” … or more crudely,… “The Eff You Party”
‘Fix the Debt’ Shows Its True, Billionaire-Funded, Anti-Tax Colors
Richard (RJ) Eskow
Posted: 12/03/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/fix-the-debt-shows-its-tr_b_2234862.html
Excerpt:
“Fix the Debt” is allegedly an impromptu alliance of America’s largest CEOs. But it’ really the latest manifestation of a perenially right-wing, pro-billionaire, pro-corporate lobby — one created years ago by hedge fund manager and former Nixon Cabinet member Pete Peterson. It has assumed many shapes, forms, and identities over the years, always in the guise of a noble and “bipartisan” effort to address what it describes as the “urgent” issue of the Federal deficit.
Any organization that promotes a policy agenda may wind up advocating for goals that benefit some groups more than others. What’s surprising is how routinely this network of organizations undermines its own stated goal of deficit reduction, and how starkly and consistently it serves the self-interest of its sponsors.
Now, confronted with some runaway executives and an aggressive Senator, this allegedly “nonpartisan” group and its most public spokesperson are finally showing their true colors. Behind all the “independent” rhetoric, it’s a network of covert Grover Norquists out to protect tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.
The Thing
Peterson’s Hydra-headed operation has gone by many names over the years, including the “Comeback America Initiative,” “The Can Kicks Back,” and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, to name just a few. But while the guises have been many, the message has always been the same: Gut Social Security and Medicare. Shrink government. And absurdly, reduce tax rates for millionaires and corporations in the name of deficit reduction.
Like the creature from The Thing, it assumes many forms: A group of young people “spontaneously” organizing themselves. A sudden movement to have town hall meetings on the deficit. And now, America’s CEOs sharing their selfless concern for the national debt’s impact on others.
Whenever it morphs itself it tries to present each new form as a spontaneous reaction by some segment of the population. But the makeshift illusion of grassroots support is hard to maintain, given that a small group of key players forms the core cadre of this shapeshifting antigovernment entity: Erskine Bowles. Alan Simpson. David Walker.
Mike S.,
“What interests me as a former Psychotherapist is what is motivating these me[n] besides greater profits and income. ”
I’d like to know what motivates them too. They’re self-absorbed, greedy, and amoral.
*****
Bernie Sanders: When Is Enough Enough? (December 2010)
Elaine,
Brilliant article that encompasses the entirety of the fiscal fraud being perpetrated against us by the wealthy elite of this Nation. I will copy it for my files in its entirety as a great reference for future comments. What interests me as a former Psychotherapist is what is motivating these me besides greater profits and income. Once a person achieves the financial success of these people, when does the need to accumulate more wealth end, if ever? The conundrum is their opposition to programs like SS, Medicare and Medicaid that benefit the less wealthy in society. Why wouldn’t they want people with lower incomes taken care of since it would benefit all of society? I can offer a few explanations and perhaps they as an aggregate answer the question.
1. They view society as the “makers and the takers”. They “make” and the rest of us parasitically take. This is illustrated by Romney’s 47% remark and the yea saying echoes of it among CEO’s like Blankfein. They want to punish the “takers” for their “non-contribution” to society.
2. Perhaps as studies have shown the majority of them are sociopaths and so have little but disdain for anyone else.
3. As I’ve put forth elsewhere they are part of a “Return to Feudalism” movement with them as the “Nobility”. The overwhelming majority of us have to be reduced to poverty and serfdom, so that they ca clearly be identified as the “worthy nobles”.
4. They represent a generation of people who read Ayn Rand and their ego driven critical faculties are such that they believed her self-serving drivel.
5. They are abysmally imperceptive and have risen to their positions either by luck of birth, by relentless clawing to the top via the “Peter Principle and don’t deserve the high offices to which they have been raised.
6. All, or some of the above.
Sherrod Brown on Social Security and Medicare
Fiscal Cliff Primer: Should Congress Take Social Security Advice From Bailed-Out Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein?
By Zach Carter & Jason Linkins
11/20/12
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/fiscal-cliff-lloyd-blankfein-social-security_n_2166099.html
Excerpt:
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein urged Congress and President Barack Obama to cut Social Security, arguing that the program cannot “afford” to keep funding longer modern retirements. He left out that Social Security currently has a $2.7 trillion surplus and could strengthen its financial footing further by simply taxing more of the income of wealthy executives like Blankfein himself.
During an interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley on Monday, Blankfein said that entitlement programs including Social Security “have to be slowed down and contained.”
“Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career,” Blankfein said. “So there will be things that, you know — the retirement age has to be changed. Maybe some of the benefits have to be affected. Maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.”
In fact, people do not receive full Social Security benefits until age 67, and the average worker receives those benefits for 16.1 years. Raising the retirement age would disproportionately hurt low-income workers, who tend to live shorter lives than wealthier workers.
Moreover, without any changes, Social Security’s existing surplus is projected to keep the program solvent through 2033. That solvency could be further extended, without resorting to benefits cuts, by lifting the earnings cap on rich workers. Under current law, workers and employers pay Social Security taxes only on the first $110,100 of an individual’s income. Any earnings beyond that are not subject to the tax, which is currently 6.2 percent for workers, plus an additional 6.2 percent for their employers.
Lifting the cap and making all income subject to Social Security tax would inject billions of dollars in additional revenue into the program.
9 Greedy CEOs Trying to Shred the Safety Net While Pigging Out on Corporate Welfare
Financiers, polluters and other biz honchos team up to strangle the economy.
AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore
http://www.alternet.org/economy/9-greedy-ceos-trying-shred-safety-net-while-pigging-out-corporate-welfare
Excerpt:
November 26, 2012 | A gang of brazen CEOs has joined forces to promote economically disastrous and socially irresponsible austerity policies. Many of those same CEOs were bailed out by the American taxpayer after a Wall Street-driven financial crash. Instead of a thank-you, they are showing their appreciation in the form of a coordinated effort to rob Americans of hard-earned retirements, decent medical care and relief for the poorest.
Using the excuse of a phony, manufactured crisis known as the “fiscal cliff” – which isn’t a crisis at all, as economist James K. Galbraith has succinctly explained — they are gearing up to pull the wool over the public’s eyes by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The CEOs are part of the Fix the Debt campaign run by the Peter Peterson -backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to unleash tens of millions pushing for a deficit reduction deal that favors the rich.
You can be sure that many more CEOs in addition to the names on the list below sympathize with plans to shred the social safety net and enjoy windfall tax breaks. But these Scrooges are so bold as to publicly announce their desire to pick the pockets of fellow Americans while simultaneously pigging out at the corporate welfare trough. Multitasking!
A generation ago, an American CEO would think twice about announcing utter disregard not only for his neighbors and employees, but also for the economy, which can’t prosper when income is consistently redistributed upward (see Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality for more on that theme). But in the present culture — even after the Occupy Wall Street movement – these business barons feel perfectly comfortable trumpeting their desire to get richer at your expense.
Here’s a sample of the Fix the Debt CEO Council Hall of Shame.
1. Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO, Goldman, Sachs & Co. Blankfein, infamous for describing his financial activities as “God’s work,” shared his attitude toward society with CBS news recently. He explained his keen desire to see Americans lowering their sights for the future. You really have to watch the interview to get the full flavor of Blankfein’s smug assurance that predation can be sold as concern for the nation’s well-being. In addition to trotting out several myths about Social Security’s design and functions, including the bogus notion that retirement age must be raised , he gives a pithy summary of what life is going to be like for the 99 percent:
“You’re going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people’s expectations of what they’re going to get, the entitlements, and what people think they’re going to get, because you’re not going to get it.”
Not if Lloyd Blankfein has anything to do with it. He calls it managing expectations. Here’s another word: theft.
Since the financial crash, Blankfein’s company, Goldman Sachs, has received tens of billions of dollars in what the Economic Policy Journal describes as “direct and indirect succor from the Fed.” In sharp contrast to average Americans, when Goldman needed help in the 2008 crisis, a friendly Federal Reserve let Goldman turn into a commercial bank almost overnight, so it could go to the Fed for help 24/7.
2. Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Company . In 2011, President Obama welcomed outsourcing pioneer Jeffrey Immelt to his White House inner circle as chair of a newly created jobs council – a move that was a sharp slap in the face to American workers. Immelt returned the favor by dumping Obama in favor of Mitt Romney in the recent election .
Obviously, supporting disastrous financial deregulation, dodging taxes and helping to destroy American manufacturing has not satisfied Immelt. He’d like to add insult to injury by making sure that people who have been screwed by the reckless activities of short-sighted corporate titans like himself are left to starve in their golden years and go without medical care. And as for the poor, well, couldn’t they be just a little bit poorer? Immelt thinks that would be swell.
After the 2008 crash, the government gave a giant boost to hard-pressed GE Capital, the company’s financing arm, through the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. GE has also helped itself to enormous taxpayer-funded subsidies, especially in green energy. And guess how much GE paid in taxes in 2010? Nothing. In fact, using what the New York Times describes as its “innovative accounting practices,” it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion!
Elaine,
You expect it to get better when people like this control….it reminds me of what I’ve read of the Rothschilds……
Why We Should Stop Obsessing About The Federal Budget Deficit
Robert Reich
Sunday, November 18, 2012
http://robertreich.org/post/36001609487
Excerpt:
I wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both.
Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out of the economy.
But more jobs and growth will help reduce the deficit. With more jobs and faster growth, the deficit will shrink as a proportion of the overall economy. Recall the 1990s when the Clinton administration balanced the budget ahead of the schedule it had set with Congress because of faster job growth than anyone expected — bringing in more tax revenues than anyone had forecast. Europe offers the same lesson in reverse: Their deficits are ballooning because their austerity policies have caused their economies to sink.
The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less. And for taxes to stay low – or become even lower – on the middle class.
(Higher taxes on the rich won’t slow the economy because the rich will keep spending anyway. After all, being rich means spending whatever you want to spend. By the same token, higher taxes won’t reduce their incentive to save and invest because they’re already doing as much saving and investing as they want. Remember: they’re taking home a near record share of the nation’s total income and have a record share of total wealth.)
Why don’t our politicians and media get this? Because an entire deficit-cutting political industry has grown up in recent years – starting with Ross Perot’s third party in the 1992 election, extending through Peter Petersen’s Institute and other think-tanks funded by Wall Street and big business, embracing the eat-your-spinach deficit hawk crowd in the Democratic Party, and culminating in the Simpson-Bowles Commission that President Obama created in order to appease the hawks but which only legitimized them further.
Most of the media have bought into the narrative that our economic problems stem from an out-of-control budget deficit. They’re repeating this hokum even now, when we’re staring at a fiscal cliff that illustrates just how dangerous deficit reduction can be.
Deficit hawks routinely warn unless the deficit is trimmed we’ll fall prey to inflation and rising interest rates. But there’s no sign of inflation anywhere. The world is awash in underutilized capacity As for interest rates, the yield on the ten-year Treasury bill is now around 1.26 percent – lower than it’s been in living memory.
In fact, if there was ever a time for America to borrow more in order to put our people back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure and rebuilding our schools, it’s now.
UNDERSTANDING THE FISCAL CLIFF (IN 2 MINUTES 30 SECONDS)
Robert Reich
http://robertreich.org/post/37121025287
Excerpt:
Democrats, here are eight principles to guide you in the coming showdown over the fiscal cliff:
ONE: HOLD YOUR GROUND. The wealthy have to pay their fair share of taxes. That’s what the election was all about, and we won. It’s only fair they pay more. They’re taking home record share of national income and wealth, and have lowest effective tax rate in living memory.
TWO: NO DEAL IS BETTER THAN A BAD DEAL. You’re in a strong bargaining position. If you do nothing, the Bush tax cuts automatically expire in January, and we go back to rates during Clinton administration. Which isn’t such a bad thing. As I recall we had a pretty good economy during the Clinton years.
THREE: MAKE REPUBLICANS VOTE ON EXTENDING THE TAX CUTS JUST FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS. After all the Bush tax cuts expire, have Republicans vote on an extending the Bush tax cut just for the middle-class. If they refuse and try to hold those tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for the wealthy, it will show whose side they’re on. They’ll pay the price in 2014.
FOUR: DEMAND HIGHER TAX RATES ON WEALTHY, NOT JUST LIMITS ON DEDUCTIONS. Don’t fall for Republican offers to limit some tax deductions on the wealthy. Demand we go back to higher tax rates on the wealthy and eliminate their unfair tax loopholes, so they truly start paying their fair share.
FIVE: DON’T CUT SAFETY NETS. Don’t sacrifice Medicare or Social Security, or programs for the poor. Americans depend on these safety nets and can’t afford any benefit cuts.
Great job Elaine. It amazes me that these thiefs have the gall to smile at the camera while they are stealing from the American public.
I have been reading up on the debt ceiling. It was created by congress during the time of WW-I, and is nothing more than a bookkeeping artifice. From what I have read, it may even be unconstitutional, since it flies in the face of the ‘full faith and credit’ clause. How can a statute passed by a legislative body trump the Constitution? All the debt ceiling does is limit whether the government can pay its bills for services they have already agreed to pay. If I told the electric company their bill exceeded my own debt ceiling and I was not going to pay it, I would be sitting here in the dark.
Nice Polite Republican’s radio had a bit on Morning Edition a couple weeks ago where they talked to 6 economists that they CLAIM crossed the spectrum from con to lib. There were only two things the bozos on that bus agreed to – remove the home mortgage interest deduction and stop taxing businesses. I almost ripped the radio out of the car!
If they can additionally gut Social Security and Medicare – which have not only paid for themselves but funded over 3 trillion dollars of the Reagan/Bush tax cuts they will have competed a feat I assumed to be impossible, the sheep will have slaughtered themselves.
Fighting Fiscal Phantoms
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 25, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/krugman-fighting-fiscal-phantoms.html
Excerpt:
These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry for them, if it weren’t for their role in diverting attention from the ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment.
What has changed? For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows. Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the “fiscal cliff” — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.
Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run by more or less the same people; dig down into many of these groups’ back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.
But the deficit scolds aren’t giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt, is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while making lower tax rates a “core principle.” That last part makes no sense in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.
The Obscenely Rich Men Bent on Shredding the Safety Net
By Lynn Parramore, senior editor at Alternet and founder of Recessionwire.
12/5/12
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/the-obscenely-rich-men-bent-on-shredding-the-safety-net.html
Excerpt:
New York magazine calls it a “Mass Movement for Millionaires.” The New York Times’ Paul Krugman sums up the idea: “Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.”
The Campaign to Fix the Debt is a huge, and growing, coalition of powerful CEOs, politicians and policy makers on a mission to lower taxes for the rich and to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid under the cover of concern about the national debt. The group was spawned in July 2012 by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, architects of a misguided deficit reduction scheme in Washington back in 2010. By now, the “fixers” have collected a war chest of $43 million. Private equity billionaire Peter G. Peterson, longtime enemy of the social safety net, is a major supporter.
This new Wall Street movement, which includes Republicans and plenty of Democrats, is hitting the airwaves, hosting roundtables, gathering at lavish fundraising fêtes, hiring public relations experts, and traveling around the country to push its agenda. The group aims to seize the moment of the so-called “fiscal cliff” debate to pressure President Obama to concede to House Republicans and continue the Bush income tax cuts for the rich while shredding the social safety net. The group includes Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Honeywell’s David Cote, Aetna’s Mark Bertolini, Delta Airlines’ Richard Anderson, Boeing’s W. James McNerney, and over 100 other influential business honchos and their supporters.
Corporations represented by the fixers have collected massive bailouts from taxpayers and gigantic subsidies from the government, and they enjoy tax loopholes that in many cases bring their tax bills down to zero. Sometimes their creative accountants even manage to get money back from Uncle Sam. For instance, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, Boeing has paid a negative 6.5 percent tax rate for the last decade, even though it was profitable every year from 2002 through 2011.
These CEOs talk about shared sacrifice, but it seems that they don’t intend to share anything but your retirement money with their wealthy friends. As New York mag reports:
Most on-the-record comments are a mishmash of platitudes about shared sacrifice and working together for the good of the country. But interviews with a number of organizers and CEO council members point to a massive networking effort among one-percenters — one that relies on strategically exploiting existing business relationships and appealing to patriotic and economic instincts.
WED NOV 14, 2012
‘Fix the Debt’ operates as a front for corporate tax breaks and cuts in government social programs
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/14/1161547/–Fix-the-Debt-operates-as-a-front-for-corporate-tax-breaks-and-cuts-in-government-social-programs
Excerpt:
A key element of the campaign is the proposed shift to a territorial tax system. The way things work now is that, regardless of where U.S.-headquartered corporations make their profits, they owe U.S. taxes on them at a top tax rate of 35 percent. They get a credit for foreign taxes paid. Profits from any investments deemed to be made permanently overseas are exempted unless the money is brought back to the States. So far, so good.
But in many cases when the profits are not invested permanently overseas, corporations tuck them away in tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. If they brought these lightly taxed or not taxed at all profits back to the States, they would have to pay at the 35 percent rate. A territorial tax system that only taxes domestically earned income would allow corporations to “repatriate” those profits without coughing up a nickel to the government. The Obama administration has been cool to the idea of a territorial tax system, while Vice President Joe Biden has spoken out adamantly against it.
Klinger and Anderson focused on 63 of the more than 80 companies that are part of the Fix the Debt campaign and found, through their 10K filings, that they hold $418 billion off-shore. Other sources estimate that the total stashed away by Fortune 500 companies is $1.5 trillion or considerably more.
The biggest potential winners [of a territorial system] are General Electric, which could reap a tax windfall of as much as $35.7 billion on its overseas earnings stash of $102 billion, and Microsoft, which could garner a savings of $19.4 billion on its $60.8 billion in accumulated foreign earnings.
A territorial system would give companies additional incentives to disguise U.S. profits as income earned in tax havens in order to avoid paying U.S. income taxes.
How does Microsoft finagle this disguise? Anderson writes:
A Senate investigation this year shed light on this question. They found that Microsoft takes the patents for software developed at its U.S. research facilities and registers them in tax haven countries. That way, when a U.S. customer buys a copy of Microsoft Office, a hefty chunk of the profits is recorded in no-tax zones.
The Institute for Policy Studies says that “corporations leading this campaign are contributing to Americans’ retirement insecurity by funneling enormous sums into their CEO retirement accounts while underfunding their employee pension funds.”
After the Hostess bankruptcy can we call these planned underfundings
The New Twinkie Defense.
Combined with right to work laws, We are getting scrooged And turning into a two-class society: the haves and the have nots. This is a disease that feeds on itself. Pretty soon the corporations will all but exhaust the middle class and have no 1 left to market to.
combined with the right to work laws that are popping up all over we are really getting Scrooged Right and left.