Two days after Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced legislation taking aim at ending corporate inversions, Politico has deemed the Democrats' focus on the practice—corporations buying overseas companies and moving their headquarters to those locations to avoid U.S. taxes—a "strategy flop" and a "massive dud." Why? Here's their reasoning
Almost no one is talking about the issue on the campaign trail. And there is little chance legislation will advance or even come to a vote on Capitol Hill before the midterm elections. Meanwhile, some influential tax policy analysts suggest any of the administration's possible unilateral actions could make the problem worse, be deemed illegal, or wouldn’t have much impact at all.
At the same time, Republicans seem increasingly comfortable arguing that companies looking to "invert" by moving their official address out of the U.S. highlights the disaster of the American Tax Code and the need for a complete overhaul, not another one-off fix sure to be shredded by corporate accounting wizards.
In other words, the people Politico cares about—Republicans and big business—are pooh-poohing it. Never mind that it can't come to a vote in Congress because Republicans won't let it. The Republican-controlled House just won't schedule it, and the Senate is being hamstrung on doing anything by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's stranglehold on the process. The story does note that "when you explain what inversions are to voters, they don’t like them. In fact, they pretty much hate them." Nonetheless, it's just a loser of an issue, they insist.
Perhaps more telling, about Politico anyway, is that it reports "experts" saying that executive action could be a disaster at worse or pointless at best. So which is it? Politico doesn't say, just wants us to know that executive action is going to be a really (or maybe just a minor) bad thing.
Of course, none of this could have anything to do with Politico's coziness with big business now, could it?