“Firms invest to lobby Congress to trim overseas profit levy from 35% to 5.25%.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/25/MNPO1M2LGM.DTL
This is big business leveraging an already bad situation; they know they have Congress over a barrel. It’s time for Congress to swim against the corporate tide and get on top of the problems they’ve helped create, with some unconventional ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking on all sides. Here’s one suggestion on how to handle this lobbying on overseas profits…go in the opposite direction…at least for now. One way or another, all profits come out of either consumer or taxpayer pocketbooks. However, foreign profits are unique in that they didn’t come out of the wallets of US citizens; they were generated abroad and could be brought to bear on America’s current problems. Swimming against the tide in this case would be something like the following scenario:
1) Pass the law requiring a balanced budget no later than 2012, or the entire Congress is turned out on its ear in a no confidence vote…by law, expenses can never again exceed revenues, except during a period when Congress has declared war.
2) For a period of time,90% of all foreign profits will be applied to the soveriegn debt overhang, until it is reduced to zero.
3) For any period during which the sovereign debt is zero, the levy on foreign profits will be reduced from 90% to 5.25%…corporations eventually get what they want, but they have to put some skin in the game and contribute to getting us out of this hole first…someone needs to pick up this mantle and get the bargain struck.
Before everyone becomes apoplectic over what I’ve just proposed, try looking at it this way: there are really only two money generating engines in our economy for reducing our sovereign debt: taxation or corporate America…the Fed just printing more money isn’t the answer. The taxation route is socialism in it’s most painful form; but corporate America taking it on might just be capitalism’s finest hour. Of the two, the corporate engine is by far the more efficient and robust; it’s the best engine we’ve got for climbing out of this hole…let’s put it to work!