Elections don’t happen in a reality created in one debate, or even one election season. People think about things– emotionally — in ways that reflect being propagandized to over many years. And that brings us to taxes– and a reason Democrats lose elections and, when they win, they often drag us in the same poor policy direction.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about Chuck “Senator Wall Street” Schumer and how he reflects the extremely narrow debate on the fiscal realities before us. It was a fine thing for Chuckie to argue that lowering tax rates for the wealthiest Americans was a dumb thing to do– even though the whole context of his speech was the phony debt and deficit “crisis”.
The Citizens of Tax Justice nails the point even better than I did:
But then Sen. Schumer stumbles. Here’s what he says about corporate (and other business) taxes:
“Some on the left have suggested corporate tax reform could be a source for new revenue, but I disagree. To preserve our international competitiveness, it is imperative that we seek to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent and do it on a revenue-neutral basis.”
Oops! Despite the fact that U.S. corporate income taxes are almost the lowest in the developed world (PDF) as a share of the economy, Schumer seems to think that the amount we now collect in corporate income taxes is just about perfect. That’s simply ridiculous.
For one thing, the kind of “tax reform” that big corporations and their allies in Congress are promoting would be perverse. Their central goal is to eliminate U.S. taxes on corporations’ foreign profits. Of course, to keep their promise to break even, their version of “tax reform” would have to increase U.S. taxes on profits earned here in the United States. [emphasis added]
Yes, it’s ridiculous. It’s political malpractice. And worse it’s really bad for the country.
More:
There’s a second point. Due to a plethora of tax subsidies, we also have very low taxes on corporate profits earned in the United States. And a fat lot of good that’s done us economically. So we should be increasing corporate taxes on U.S. profits, too. Not on all companies, to be sure. But on average, Fortune 500 corporations now pay only about half the official 35 percent corporate tax rate on their U.S. profits. A quarter of these giant corporations now pay less than 10 percent in U.S. taxes on their U.S. profits, including many that pay nothing at all.
So, the bottom line is this: when Chuckie argues this ridiculous, foolish, immoral point that we need to reduce the corporate tax rate, all he is doing is arguing for the continued robbing of the American people. And when you get DEMOCRATS reinforcing the erroneous frame that taxes are too low on corporations, it’s easy to understand why a big chunk of voters can’t decide who to vote for, or, worse, vote for the really crazy people.