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A corporate crime fighting chicken, that is!
Here is an excerpt from Kerry's economic speech. Let me know how it sounds compared to Ralph Nader's speeches in 2000."(We need) to create jobs now and spark economic growth. But we also need to rebuild trust between investors and corporations. We need to encourage Americans to have confidence in the markets.
Unfortunately, while this President talks tough on corporate accountability - his administration has
worked tirelessly to undermine reform and sabotage any meaningful oversight of the accounting industry. They even tried to cut next year’s budget for the SEC by $200 million - further weakening enforcement of corporate crimes.
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Frankly, we need a President whose approach to abuse is a
little more like Teddy Roosevelt and a little less like Herbert Hoover when it comes to keeping an eye on corporate America. We need an SEC chairman who will put investors ahead of industry, an Accounting Oversight Board chairman who will make sure they correct the books, instead of cooking them, And we need to
give the SEC the tools it needs to enforce the laws.
And just as we need to renew American confidence in the markets, we have to restore long-term confidence in our government with budget and tax reform. That means simplifying the tax code and making sure it puts the interests of all Americans ahead of the special interests. It means
closing tax loopholes and cutting corporate welfare. And it means a long-term effort to keep our budget balanced - cutting wasteful spending so we can invest in economic programs that work.
And if we’re serious about fairness - and about holding the fabric of America together - we must eliminate unfair tax shelters and cut corporate welfare. This will not only save taxpayers money - it will put government back on the side of the people and allow us to focus on actually creating jobs.
Just think - offshore tax havens and shelters enable corporations and executives to
evade an estimated $70 billion in taxes each year. How can anyone in this country suggest we have a fair system when companies can take $70 billion off the table? That undermines the very essence of our government.
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It’s a system only companies like Enron could love. And did they ever. Enron held over 800 subsidiaries in countries with no taxes on income, profits, or capital gains -- 692 in the Cayman Islands alone. I believe in opening new markets and I want American companies to win. But I know we can distinguish between legitimate businesses and sham transactions. Assets in offshore entities have climbed from an
estimated $200 billion in 1983, to an estimated $5 trillion today - and too many are brass plate addresses with a fax machine in an offshore tax haven.
What does that say to the vast majority of Americans who actually pay taxes? And
the silence from this Administration speaks volumes! They’ve dragged their feet and fought every attempt to crack down on corporate loopholes. It’s time we stood up and insisted on real reform and real tax fairness.
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We must also take a hard look at federal spending. We simply can’t afford to keep wasting money on the wrong things.
It won’t be easy. The special interests will stop at nothing to keep their special deals. That’s why I’ve joined John McCain in calling for a “Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission”
modeled after the military base-closing commission. A bipartisan group would recommend corporate subsidies to be eliminated and Congress would have to vote up or down on the entire package.
It’s the only way to
stop the games that go on in Washington. When I first came to the Senate, each year millions upon millions of dollars were lavished on a wool and mohair subsidy cooked up during WWI to make sure we’d have plenty of wool and mohair for our soldiers’ uniforms. But even after we stopped making our uniforms out of wool and mohair, the subsidy continued. I came to the Senate floor again and again - finally we killed it. Or we thought we did. Last year it came back. This kind of wasteful, no-growth, special interest giveaway is alive and well -- again. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
We were presented a defense bill that gave away $250,000 to an Illinois firm to research caffeinated chewing gum; $750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska; $250,000 for a lettuce geneticist in Salinas, California and $64,000 for urban pest research in Georgia.
This is our defense budget?By eliminating these expenditures would you balance the budget? No. But that’s not the point. The point is that no politician can - with credibility - tell you he’s ‘fiscally responsible’ if he stays silent while these games are played. Is wasteful spending a tiny part of the budget? Yes. But it’s far more than most working people will ever see in their lives and invested in choices that do matter -- that do grow our economy -- it can make a world of difference.
It’s a question of choices. The Fossil Energy Research and Development program spends more than
$400 million on R&D for oil companies who can afford their own R&D- and even duplicates research they’re already engaged in. And for 130 years the Federal government has allowed companies to
mine on publicly owned lands for free, in addition to letting them buy those lands way below market price -- $5 an acre or less. If we simply required small, fair royalties and eliminated the giveaway of public lands we could save another $519 million over 5 years."
It’s time we made that our policy so we can invest in things that really matter.
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