Multimillionaire New Dem John Delaney Wants To Give Rich Corporations Another Tax Holiday

Another entitled multimillionaire in Congress undermining the lives of ordinary Americans

If you caught the post Monday about how the DCCC recruits too many damned millionaires who have no way of relating to ordinary working families, you may have noticed that Maryland multimillionaire backbencher John Delaney spent $2,370,556 last year to buy himself a seat, the third most among the wealthy Democratic freshmen (all of whom immediately joined the extremely corrupt, pro-Business/anti-Family New Dems). In the battle over saving Social Security-- the importance of which these wealthy assholes don't comprehend-- they have almost all, and Delaney in particular, been on the wrong side. Delaney has been an aggressive advocate for the Republican Chained CPI scheme.

Adam Pase, the corporate-oriented Executive Director of the corrupt New Dems sent around a "dear colleague" letter in May, shilling an OpEd by John Delaney, who thinks-- like Republicans-- that working people need to have the retirement age raised and that the Chained CPI is a swell idea.

The last time Congress played politics with the debt ceiling, in the summer of 2011, we wounded our economy. We sent a message to the markets that we were considering destructive actions, and they listened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points, and August 2011 was the worst month for private-sector job creation in the past three years. For the first time ever, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating.

Instead of making the same mistake, we should do the hard work required to reach a long-term grand bargain. This means three things: (1) reforming entitlements by adopting a form of “chained CPI” to lower the long-term costs of these programs, adjusting the retirement age for those not engaged in manual labor and raising the cap on Social Security taxes; (2) generating more revenue through a “Buffett rule” approach that makes sure high-earners pay a similar rate to that of the middle class and by closing certain corporate tax loopholes while lowering corporate tax rates; and (3) adjusting discretionary and defense spending to better reflect our country’s priorities, which are vastly different from the indiscriminate cuts imposed by the sequester. With this framework, we can manage our fiscal trajectory in the next 10 years, and beyond, while also investing in our children, caring for the less fortunate and protecting our nation.

Although Delaney's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score (71.95) isn't as bad as some of the other New Dems, he does come from one of the most solidly blue districts of any New Dem. Obama won MD-06 55-43% and Delaney won his general election in the freshly gerrymandered district 59-38% against longtime incumbent Roscoe Bartlett. He has the breathing space to be a real Democrat if he wants to. But he doesn't want to. He represents the interest of his own socio-economic class, rich assholes. This week he introduced a bill Wall Street loves. It would grant a tax amnesty to multinational corporations bringing home billions of dollars of profits now offshore in order to fund an infrastructure bank was strongly criticized today in a letter to House members signed by 30 national organizations working to ensure that big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

Delaney's bill, H.R. 2084, is designed to reward big corporations that avoid taxes through overseas accounting tricks, encourage more future offshore tax dodging, fail to create jobs in America and increase the deficit-- another tax holiday for the wealthy like Delaney himself that is “nothing more than a blatant attempt to escape their tax obligations and shift the burden onto taxpaying Americans, small businesses and domestic firms.”

The letter signers emphasized that past amnesties have failed to deliver for the American people, instead merely enriching executives and shareholders. The requirement in the current bill that corporations "repatriating" their profits invest part of them in an infrastructure bank does nothing to improve the legislation, since several tax dodging corporations will control the proposed bank, inviting collusion and financial game playing.

Many of the companies bringing home profits under a 2004 repatriation amnesty actually reduced employment, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; of the corporate cash repatriated, 92 percent went to stock buybacks, executive bonuses and dividends, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the letter noted.

Endorsing the concept of an infrastructure bank as a stand-alone idea, the letter signers wrote: "Congress should finance infrastructure investment by closing offshore tax loopholes, not by encouraging corporations to use them."

Delaney's co-sponsors are mostly as bad as he is, a collection of rich white people who constantly crusade against the interests of ordinary working families:

• Andy Barr (R-KY)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• John Carney (New Dem-DE)
• Tom Cole (R-OK)
• Gerald Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Rodney Davis (R-IL)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Chris Gibson (R-NY)
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)
• David Joyce (R-OH)
• Joe Kennedy (D-MA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)
• Luke Messer (R-IN)
• Jim Moran (New Dem-VA)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)
• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)
• Mike Turner (R-OH)
• Ted Yoho (R-FL)