Chamber Of Commerce’s Stimulus: Cut Corporate Taxes, Prevent Employee Free Choice
Chamber Of Commerce’s Stimulus: Cut Corporate Taxes, Prevent Employee Free Choice
As President-elect Barack Obama and Congress work to craft an economic stimulus plan, various conservatives have tried to turn it into a giant tax cut for corporations and the rich.
Today, the Chamber of Commerce weighed in with its State of American Business 2009 report. While the Chamber is correct to say that a stimulus package should be enacted “immediately,” — and rightly notes the benefits of infrastructure investment — its plan is essentially a pro-corporation, anti-worker grab bag.
The Chamber’s proposals include:
- Cutting corporate income taxes and making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
- Reducing the corporate capital gains tax and extending the corporate tax refund period from two to five years.
- Defeating the Employee Free Choice Act and maintaining the anti-worker status quo.
Cutting corporate taxes is one of the worst ways to stimulate economic activity. The Chamber’s ideas are simply “time-honored business tax breaks that have never done anything to jump-start the economy.” As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams opined, maybe “businesses are just trying to profit from the government rescue.”
Meanwhile, the Chamber has already been throwing millions of dollars into opposing Employee Free Choice, which it called a “firestorm bordering on Armageddon.” But as the Washington Post’s Harold Myerson wrote today, “The one great period of broadly shared prosperity in U.S. history remains the three decades following World War II, which, anything but coincidentally, is the one period in which America had high levels of unionization.” “There is no historic precedent for mass prosperity absent mass collective bargaining,” he noted. “The model cannot be constructed.”
Of course, unionization is not a form of stimulus, but after the (immensely necessary) stimulus plan has been enacted, there needs to be a mechanism in place to ensure longer-term recovery and growth. Unionization can help by fostering “a competitive high-wage, high-productivity economic strategy.” The Chamber, though, wants to rely on corporations to get America out of this downturn. That’s not a framework for stimulus or recovery that will be successful.
4 Responses to “Chamber Of Commerce’s Stimulus: Cut Corporate Taxes, Prevent Employee Free Choice”
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Merger banks already got their tax cut from the swipe of Hank Paulson’s pen. So how will cutting taxes on corporations help our credit crisis? $8.5 trillion in federal interventions did nothing to make credit more available.
I especially don’t understand Obama’s plan to allow companies to retroactively apply losses to prior years. Citzens don’t have that opportunity.
It looks like corporafornication may be a bi-partisan project. With all the Rahm Emauel recruited Blue Dogs and remaining Repugs, the corporatocracy may just get its way.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pmCNBC reported Barack Obama is reconsidering repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Wasn’t that a key platform stand for Obama, a 3% rise in personal income taxes for the wealthy?
Pffftttt! Pffffttttt!
Now change means No Change from W.
January 7th, 2009 at 5:27 pmin mid-december, the chamber had a speaker come to town, s.central illinois, to speak about keeping unions out of business…
a Keith Braskich… “a partner at David and Campbel in Peoria”… “a specialist in labor management relations who spoke about the possible effects the Employee Free Choice Ace will have on employers and then led a work-shop teaching employers how to keep their organizations union free.”
i wasn’t able to hash it out with my usual letter-to-the-editor method, turning instead to preparing for christmas prep and space-invaders…
had forgotten about it till now… i can’t find the article online either… from my local daily, and they don’t post all stories…
well, it’s not called “Chamber of Commerce and Employees”.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:32 pmHonestly have you people already forgotten the debates? The corporate tax cut is for small businesses. The effective tax rate on large for-profit businesses is going back up with re-focused audits, and the way I see it, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are going to expire before people get tired of Treasury securities, or at least back to the levels they were in September.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:21 pm