They´re back. Citigroup, Coca-Cola, IBM, Merck, and dozens of other major U.S. corporations are back in Washington — like hogs at the trough — demanding to be fed another tax boondoggle.
This is not the first pig-out for these oinkers. In 2005, having stashed huge profits in foreign countries and tax havens, the multinational giants came to Washington offering Congress a heck of a deal: We’ll bring this money back to the U.S. and invest it here, creating beaucoup jobs, if you give us a sweetheart tax rate on our profits of only about 5 percent, rather than the usual 35 percent rate.
The Bushites and GOP Congress enthusiastically took the bait. Sure enough, $312 billion came home … but instead of investing it in job creation, top executives and big shareholders simply put it in their pockets. Sixty percent of the boondoggle was gobbled up by only 15 of America’s biggest multinationals — many of which actually shut down American plants, fired thousands of workers and moved more of their production abroad. Merck, for example, brought nearly $16 billion home in October 2005, then announced a restructuring plan the next month to close U.S. plants and cut some 3,500 jobs. You could almost hear the executives chortle and say, “Thanks, suckers.”
Well, look out. A corporate lobbying front is working with Republican House leaders to sucker us again. The group includes such super-rich computer giants as Apple, Dell, Google and Intel, pushing for what they call a “repatriation holiday.” With a big stage wink, they promise to create jobs in exchange for that same, dandy 5 percent tax deal.
What gross hoggishness! State and national budgets are being slashed — and these fat greedheads are trying to scam America with a tax holiday for themselves. To fight their greed, go to www.usuncut.org.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
[JimHightower.comFor more information on Jim Hightower’s work — and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown — visit www.jimhightower.com.]
