Extenders For The Millionaire’s Club
“The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.” – James Garfield
Wall Street Journal columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes in the June issue of Readers Digest that, “Someday history will write of our era, and the biggest scandal will be the thing we accepted in our leaders; chronic and endemic selfishness. History will be hard on us for that.”
Nowhere is this chronic selfishness more pervasive than in our legislative processes on Capitol Hill. Peter Schweizer writes in his groundbreaking book Extortion that:
“Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and more to do with accessing money and favors. Bills and regulations are often introduced, not to affect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for money and favors.”
And what’s the favorite vehicle for shaking people down? Why the income tax code of course; all 73,954 pages specially written by Washington’s finest lobbyists, many of whom previously served as staffers on Capitol Hill.
Don Corleone said in the movie, The Godfather, “Make me an offer I can’t refuse”. Today’s legislative equivalent of Corleone’s veiled threat has become tax extenders.
Unlike permanent legislation, tax extenders must be renewed every few years or new taxes go into effect, or the taxes that were temporarily halted under the extender are reinstated.
And make no mistake; the process of renewing tax extenders is all about filling Member’s campaign coffers. And who fills those coffers? Businesses and individuals affected by or who have an interest in the tax law (extender) up for renewal.
Schweizer provided a sickening example of how the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign coffers during the 2012 election cycle while overseeing that year’s tax extenders that were up for renewal.
This is the same Committee that has yet to act on the FairTax® plan.
According to Schweizer, after announcing hearings on the extenders up for renewal, “ten nervous senior executives at General Electric made donations to Camp on March 19totaling $16,000. Those executives had an enormous amount of money at stake in the tax extenders drama. They had become masters of sorts over the years in turning profits but largely avoiding taxes, thanks to a favorable and complicated tax code.”
He went on. “But Camp’s most lucrative play was targeting corporate PACs. From the beginning of March to the date of the hearings to vet which extenders might stay and which might go, he collected 120 checks totaling $230,000 from corporate or trade association PACs, the vast majority of which had money at stake in the tax extender debate.
The money came from the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Association of Home Builders, Walmart, General Motors, General Electric, Associated Builders and Contractors, Johnson and Johnson and more.”
Very neat, very tidy and it’s all legal.
After all, Congress wrote the laws.
In 2013, this same Committee announced with great fanfare the initiation of a bi-partisan plan for fundamental tax reform. Public comment was requested, a multi-city roadshow was orchestrated and public hearings were held.
In early 2014, the D.C. media all but announced that fundamental tax reform would not see the light of day in 2014. The Committee then began to focus on…. You guessed it…. Tax extenders. In 2014, there are 55 tax extenders up for renewal, and surprise, surprise, 2014 is an election year.
Is it any wonder that Congress is the new millionaires club?
Our Founding Fathers never envisioned a Congress where, in order to affect the legislative process, businesses and individual citizens have to operate like game pieces on a Monopoly board or risk being punished by the totalitarian enforcement arm of the IRS and other government agencies.
Agencies now literally weaponized with assault rifles and sub-machine guns. As former Microsoft chief operating officer Robert Herbold told Schweizer, “You’re crazy if you don’t play along. They will go after you.”
Our nation deserves a tax code focused on her people and her nation – not one that is punitive and frightening, and fills the campaign coffers of the new millionaires club.
If you agree and have not read Peter Schweizer’s book, Extortion, please pick up this blockbuster expose. We have made it easy.
Simply click here and donate $35 or more, forward your emailed donation confirmation and your preferred mailing address to campaigns@fairtax.org, and we will send you a hardback copy of Extortion. It’s that simple.
