President Obama Helping Lobbyists Weaken Offshore Tax Crackdown Democrats Passed in 2002

[Better Believe It]

Obama Helping Lobbyists Weaken Offshore Tax Crackdown Dems Passed in 2002 over GOP Opposition
by David Sirota
November 11, 2009


One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word "few" - concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July 26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) banning federal contracts from going to companies that engage in tax "inversions." These are the schemes whereby a corporation that is based in the United States buy a P.O. box in Bermuda and use it to legally avoid paying American taxes.

The bill, reported Congressional Quarterly at the time, "was expected to fail when the 15-minute voting clock ran out, DeLauro's amendment was five votes ahead." Ultimately, industry-owned Republican legislators who had tried to vote down the measure realized they weren't going to be able to stop it, and "after a nod from Republican leadership, more than 100 Republicans recast their votes to give DeLauro an avalanche victory." Having witnessed this firsthand on the floor of the House, I can tell you it was indeed a sight to see.

And yet in the now-Democratic Congress seven years later, with deficits exploding and the government clearly needing to strengthen any and all incentives for corporations to pay their taxes, I was more than disheartened to read this story in the Hill newspaper this week:

"Multinational corporations are fighting to preserve language in a spending bill that would weaken a ban on federal contracts.
The provision, inserted in the Senate version of the bill at the request of the Obama administration, would weaken a ban on federal contracts for inverted companies..."

Here we have a commonsense progressive tax measure that Democrats managed to pass and then expand under Bush and the GOP, and here we are less than a year into an era of full Democratic control of Washington watching Democrats aiming to weaken that tax measure. When you look at this move and remember that candidate Barack Obama himself promised to strengthen - not weaken - laws cracking down on offshore tax rip-off schemes, you wonder why we even waged that tough progressive fight back in 2002.

Read the complete article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/11-9

[villager]

1. Wow -- the hear/speak/see- no unreccers were already here!

n/t

[Better Believe It]

3. They obviously support the corporate tax dodgers.

[ProSense]

2. Posted this in another thread. The story leaves out a key detail

The 2002 ban only applied to Homeland Security. It was done through the appropriations process. The ban was expanded this year to apply to the entire federal government:

U.S. PIRG letter to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government

In 2002, Congress took the first step in enacting legislation to address corporate inverters that seek government contracts with the Homeland Security Act. The law, passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate, prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from contracting with inverted corporations. Most recently, with the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, Congress broadened this restriction to apply government-wide.

It's clearly can be construed as loophole, but given that the ban was expanded this year to apply government-wide, there must be reason it's being considered.

The bill hasn't reached the Senate floor yet so there is time to get the facts.

[Cha]

5. Thank you so much PS

for investigating these hysteria pieces tailored to smell like red meat.

[leveymg]

4. Inversions were supposed to have been banned by IRS in 02/09. What happened?

See,

Bush IRS Helps Hedge Funds Strip US Assets, Evade Taxes ... Inversion, also called "assets stripping", has allowed huge multinational ...
http://wakeupcall-vfp.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

[Better Believe It]

6. Poster(s) # 2 & 5 are on ignore. Probably because of trash talk & personal attacks against DU'ers