So our politicians tell us that we're broke....way past broke, actually....because of all the old-timers now signing up for their Medicare and Social Security, which, by the way, they PAID for over their working lives. (And if the tax rate was insufficient to keep those trust funds properly topped off, whose fault is that?)
But wait....now we find out that a cool $76 BILLION DOLLARS in special-interest tax credits was included in the recent "fiscal cliff" legislation. Lobbyists such as the firm headed by former Senator's John Breaux (D-LA) and Trent Lott (R-MS), representing companies like General Electric and Citigroup, secured for them an extension to the provision that allows multinational corporations to defer US taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries. (Their profits are all credited to subsidiaries in low-tax countries like Luxembourg where they might have nothing more than a PO Box. They then pay Luxembourg taxes, not US taxes.)
Known as the "active financing exception", this is the tool that GE (and quite a few others, too) uses to avoid paying nearly all US corporate taxes. Also blessed with sweetheart tax breaks were companies like rum distiller Diageo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the American Wind Energy Association and the Motion Picture Association of America. (I checked and Park Place Custom Homes didn't get crap!)
Obviously their shareholders are ecstatic, but how is the taxpayer's interest served here?
This scam was one the Obama administration insisted be included, and the Republicans feebly and quietly objected to, then voted "aye" anyway. ("I'll vote for yours if you'll vote for mine?") I wonder if we went back over the past 30 years or so and looked very carefully how much of our $16 TRILLION DOLLAR debt could be attributed to these kinds of giveaways?
No....no kiss, or dinner, or a movie, or even cab fare home. Just a plain old fashioned screwing. "I feel so....so used."
S
