GOP Want to Reduce Corporate Taxes - Can You Say Quid Pro Quo?

The following is from Robert Reich's facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf

Corporate tax "reform" is high on the Republican agenda because the GOP's corporate patrons are demanding payoff from their investments in the 2014 election. Watch your wallets. Here are the four biggest right-wing whoppers about corporate taxes:

1. The U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is one of the highest among advanced countries. True but misleading. The effective corporate income-tax rate – what corporations actually pay after all deductions, credits, and loopholes – is 27.7%, close to the average of all rich countries (27.2%).

2. Today's corporate tax rate is high by historic standards. Baloney. In the 1950s it was over 50%.

3. The corporate tax reduces corporate profits, which makes it harder for corporations to hire. Wrong. Corporate profits today are the highest they've been since World War II as a percentage of the economy.

4. Lowering the corporate income-tax would spur economic growth. Baloney. There's no relation between corporate tax rates and growth. In the 1950s and 60s, when the corporate tax was over 50%, the economy grew faster (at an annual average rate of 3.9%) than it has since the rate was reduced.

Don't let the right get away with their whoppers about corporate taxes. Spread the truth. 

When corporations paid their fair share, the national economy thrived and we built the greatest middle class the world has ever known.  Reducing taxes on corporations has turned our nation into an oligarchy and killing the middle class. 

Once Again President Obama Chooses a Fox to Guard the Henhouse.

President Obama’s pick to be Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic Finance is Antonio Weiss. His new job would be to oversee the domestic financial system—including the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act, and consumer protection.  He is currently the global head of investment banking at Lazard Ltd, a firm that has put together several major inversion deals.  Why is this significant? 

“Since 2003, more than thirty-five American companies have dodged taxes through similar deals, which are known as “corporate inversions.””

A number of progressive Senators, lead by Sen Warren have reservations.   "Warren has a number of problems with Weiss. The first is the fact that his career has been focused on international transactions. “Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury,” she wrote. The second is that he’s tied up in the corporate-inversion trend, which, as she notes, the Obama administration has criticized and tried to stop."

Sen Warren further stated, “It’s time for the Obama administration to loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policy making.”

Sen Warren’s third concern is “about the fox guarding the henhouse. She ticked off a long list of people with close ties to the financial industry who now serve in high-level economic-policy positions in the Obama administration, including Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and US Trade Representative Michael Froman. Letting former Wall Streeters roost in top government perches “tells people that one—and only one—point of view will dominate economic policymaking. It tells people that whatever goes wrong in this economy, the Wall Street banks will be protected first,” she wrote.”

Read more at The Nation Magazine - http://www.thenation.com/blog/191289/next-big-fight-between-progressives-and-wall-street-dems