Decade after decade, year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day, hour after hour we hear Republicans channelling Grover Norquist and claiming that taxes are too high, we must lower taxes for corporations and raising taxes is always forbidden. George Bush didn't raise any taxes to finance his two wars and instead borrowed money from China to pay for them with not a whisper of complaint from deficit hawks while even going as far as keeping Iraq and Afghanistan out of his budgets and onto unprecedented emergency supplementals. The major talking point of the GOP is that we can't raise taxes in a depression and we also have to cut spending. Some ConservaDems have adopted these ideas as well unfortunately. And even when taxes are as low as they have been under Obama's administration, the media doesn't report on it in any way that gets through to the American people.
On FOX News Sunday, Bill Kristol broke the line from his GOP buddies and admitted that corporations have plenty of money and corporate tax rates aren't hurting anyone.
Kristol: Republicans are making a mistake if they focus on big businesses and corporate tax rates. Corporations have a ton of cash. The corporate tax rate is not killing big business in America.
Wow, Kristol actually states the obvious which has been nearly impossible for Republicans to do because it breaks with the narrative that they have created ever since Obama took office even after Conservative policies trashed the global financial economy.
Kristol is not right about much, but he is on the money here. Corporations are sitting on trillions in cash reserves and corporate profits have rebounded to record highs. In fact, “the Fortune 500 generated nearly $10.8 trillion in total revenues last year, up 10.5%. Total profits soared 81%.”
But none of that has translated into sustainable job growth. The only economic indicator that has been going up is CEO pay.
Republicans are not only looking to cut the corporate tax rate, but they have been pushing to open a permanent tax loophole by switching to what’s known as a “territorial” corporate tax system, which would mean that corporations could permanently park money offshore and never pay taxes on it. The Republicans have also endorsed a misguided push to give corporations a tax windfall worth tens of billions of dollars through a tax repatriation holiday.
Parking money to offshore accounts is something you see mafia-type gangs do to hide money from the government. Republicans have adopted the Vito Corleone Tax policy. Both parties have been talking up lowering the corporate tax rates so Digby asks the right question, why?
Lowering corporate tax rates seems to be a given. The best we can hope for is that the two parties agree to close some loopholes and end some subsidies (at least until the lobbyists can get them re-instituted.)
If Bill Kristol is suddenly antagonistic to this perfect bipartisan agreement I have to wonder why.
Kristol is focusing on "regulatory matters' which always has been a big problem.
Kristol: Small business creates most of the jobs, that's a regulatory matter, that's a individual tax rate matter I think
Kristol doesn't define what constitutes a small business. With less regulations we'll see more collapses throughout the system like we did with the mortgage scandal. Next time it'll be the air we breath or the food we eat. But even if it's not revealed why he said what he said, he helped kill a Republican tax myth. I can see this quote being used in ads as we move forward into election season against the GOP.
