Where’s indignation over loopholes?

Remember how Ronald Reagan was “asleep at the wheel?” Well, while napping, Reagan managed to overhaul the corporate tax rate, closing loopholes and requiring corporations to actually pay taxes on their profits.

He was a bit miffed that General Electric and others paid no taxes. In the late ‘90s, loopholes returned with a vengeance. So now the largest corporation in America (GE) pays no taxes and accumulates billions in tax credits. Can we “hope” for “change” with our current president? President Obama has picked GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, as a liaison to the business community and chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competiveness.

Obama says, “He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.” GE has sent one fifth of its workforce overseas and pays no tax. John Samuels, a former U.S. Treasury official, heads up GE’s tax team (close to 1,000 employees) disbursing hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying money. These guys certainly know what they’re doing.

By the way, GE, which had profits of $14.2 billion in 2010, $5.1 billion in the U.S., paid no taxes. In fact, GE claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Where is the tea party indignation? GE sends jobs and investment to Ireland, Singapore and other countries, but not so much here in no-tax USA.

But it seems that noncorporate citizens who have paid taxes all their lives need to accept that all the money they paid into Social Security and Medicare was spent by the government and the IOUs (Treasury notes) issued are worthless. Entitlements are no longer savings, and insurance that I’ve been paying into for 45 years, they are now unreasonable expectations — effectively taxing me retroactively for 45 years, GE will be getting those tax credits.

Mike Kennedy

Lisle