We refer to Senators and Congressional representatives as \u201clawmakers.\u201d We democratically elect these people so that they can write and enact laws. But every so often the curtain parts, and we get a glimpse of who\u2019s writing the laws, though these are usually laws that don\u2019t make headlines. There was that time during the Bush years when corporate lobbyists were sitting right next to elected representatives —\u00a0mostly Republican —\u00a0at a committee hearing, telling them what to say.\u00a0 The GOP defenders got all huffy at those who had pointed out who was really running the legislation show.<\/p>\n
Last week\u2019s New York Times<\/em> has an article (here<\/a>) about efforts to close loopholes in corporate tax laws.\u00a0 Three-quarters of the way through the story, we get this paragraph (emphasis added):<\/p>\n Elaine C. Kamarck, the co-chairwoman of a bipartisan coalition of businesses and organizations that support a tax overhaul, says\u00a0the only way a tax bill will pass\u00a0<\/b>is to use any savings derived from closing corporate loopholes solely to lower the overall corporate tax rate. The companies that have joined the coalition, which include Boeing, AT&T, Verizon, Walmart and Walt Disney,\u00a0have agreed to put every loophole on the table<\/b>, she said, because they believe \u201ca low enough basic tax rate is worth giving up exemptions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The message is clear: our elected representatives can change the law only if a handful of corporations agree. Ms. Kamarck tells us that these corporations have selflessly allowed their tax dodges to be put \u201con the table.\u201d Presumably, had they not been so magnanimous,\u00a0 these corporations would not allow Congress to change the law.\u00a0 She also implies that if the tradeoff —\u00a0fewer exemptions but lower rates — doesn’t\u00a0benefit the corporations, they\u2019ll take their loopholes off the table and stop our elected representatives from changing the law.<\/p>\n Nice. I think that educators are so valuable to society that their income should not be taxed. But that table Ms. Kamarck mentions —\u00a0the one where you tell Congress which tax rules you\u2019ll accept —\u00a0I can\u2019t get anywhere near it.\u00a0 So I pay my taxes. In fact, last year, I paid more in taxes than did Verizon and Boeing combined.\u00a0 They, and several other huge corporations, paid zero.<\/p>\n I am, of course, naive to think that it was really Congress that wrote the laws that allow these corporations to pay nothing, and not the corporations themselves. How else?<\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We refer to Senators and Congressional representatives as \u201clawmakers.\u201d We democratically elect these people so that they can write and enact laws. But every so often the curtain parts, and we get a glimpse of who\u2019s writing the laws, though these are usually laws that don\u2019t make headlines. There was that time during the Bush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":63656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,23633,85,234,304],"class_list":["post-63654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-economics-corporations","tag-politics","tag-democracy","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/08\/11.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63654"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63713,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63654\/revisions\/63713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}