The Hill reports today that Loews and other corporations are lobbying lawmakers to slash corporate taxes.
The coalition is calling themselves "America Gains." A nice corny flag-wrapper that should immediately make everyone dubious.
With a straight face, Ed McClellan, a lobbyist for the coalition who once served as tax counsel for the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee told reporters at a press conference that cutting corporate tax rates "would be good as a way to pick up the economy."
According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), which has been contracted to lobby for the coalition and crunch the numbers, the new proposal would raise $11.6 billion over five years and $3.2 billion over 10 years. Uh huh.
Keep in mind that this is the same firm that, according to Robert McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, went around a couple of years ago "trying to get corporations to pretend their tax bills are bigger than they really are, by not just counting their actual taxes, but also taxes they don't pay, such as taxes paid by their customers, workers, suppliers and so forth!"
It's not surprising that one of PwC's lead lobbyists in this effort to hornswoggle the taxpayers is former Rep. Bill Archer -- a vehement foe of the earned income tax credit (which benefits low-income people).
In his fabulous book Perfectly Legal, David Cay Johnston wrote that Archer "complained at every opportunity about how much [the EITC] was costing the government," while pushing for eliminating the estate tax at the same time.
Don't you like it how the Republicans are coming out with such great ideas for reviving the economy that they've driven into the ditch!
At a press conference today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) justified
the conservative plan to give tax breaks to corporations -- instead of
working Americans -- by arguing that people actually like working long
hours:
"I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We're the workingest
state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people
that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two
jobs."
"Workingest" ??
Doesn't that remind you of that time (Feb. 4, 2005), when the Economist in Chief told
a divorced mother of three: "You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."
For his own sake, I hope Bill Archer has another job.