Forum Post: Why do corporations have lobbyists?
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 7, 2011, 10:16 a.m. EST by Rob
(881)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Because the government keeps pushing regulations on corporations so it is only right that the corporation try and get some sort of relief. Too many companies have suffered under government regulations, some deserved while others not at all. Unless you are for less government intrusion on corporations, then they should have every right to lobby for protections in their favor, that is why a corporation is considered a person.
BULLSHIT!
The most profitable industries in the world (energy, healthcare, finance) have been given billions in government handouts and tax breaks. Meanwhile, they keep raising charges causing hardship for millions. With all those massive handouts, tax breaks, and obscene charges, profits rise to record high levels. Millions in bonuses are paid to the executives. With record high profits, record high dividends are paid. 40% of all dividends in the United States are paid to the richest one percent. The bottom 90 percent of Americans share about 10 percent (that's ten percent) of all dividends. The rest are paid to the top 5 percent and foreign investors. All of this causes a gradual concentration of wealth and income. This results in a net loss for the lower majority who find it more and more difficult to cover the record high cost of living, which again, is directly proportional to record high profits for the rich. As more and more people struggle to make ends meet, more and more financial aid becomes necessary. Most of which goes right back to the health care industry through Medicare, Medicaid, and a very expensive prescription drug plan. This increases government spending. This has been happening for 30 years now. During the same time, tax rates have been lowered drastically for the richest one percent. Especially those who profit from investments. These people pay only 15 percent on capital gains income. As even more wealth concentrates, the lower majority find it more difficult to sustain there share of the consumer driven economy. Demand drops as more and more people go broke. Layoffs results. Unemployment rises. This results in less revenue and more government debt.
Massive subsidies and tax breaks for Wall Street, massive tax breaks for the super rich, heavy concentration of wealth, record high charges along with record high profits and record high cost of living, more hardship for the lower majority, more government spending in the form of financial aid to compensate, more concentration of wealth, less demand, layoffs and unemployment. All of this results in slower economy and less tax revenue. At the same time more and more financial aid becomes necessary. It's a horrible downward cycle which gradually pushes the national debt higher and higher.
The other big factors are the wars in the Middle East.
This post is not intended to excuse those who sit on the couch collecting welfare, make no attempt to find work, or squease out kids they can't provide for.
Here is a list of the top ten companies that not only paid little or no taxes but got huge corporate welfare from we the people.
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. Note: This claim was made by Forbes.com in April of '10'. Shortly after, they published a followup article which included a rebuttal by Exxon Mobil. Forbes.com did acknowledge a mistake based on incorrect line items filed by Exxon Mobil. http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2010/04/07/exxon-says-it-does-pay-u-s-income-taxes
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Here is what the government has become, just like our last collapse, it has become an appendage of business and the wealthy. FDR's words ring true today:
"We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.
For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker (wall street) and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
The American people know from a four-year record that today there is only one entrance to the White House--by the front door. Since March 4, 1933, there has been only one pass-key to the White House. I have carried that key in my pocket. It is there tonight. So long as I am President, it will remain in my pocket.
Those who used to have pass-keys are not happy. Some of them are desperate. Only desperate men with their backs to the wall would descend so far below the level of decent citizenship as to foster the current pay-envelope campaign against America's working people. Only reckless men, heedless of consequences, would risk the disruption of the hope for a new peace between worker and employer by returning to the tactics of the labor spy.
Here is an amazing paradox! The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism (class warfare) and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them."
Sound like what is happening today? "Class warfare" and businesses "will close up if they are taxed more" -- "it won't be worth it." The age old tactics of the tyrant oligarchs -- the wealthy and powerful to try to get the working class to vote in favor of the interests of the few. FRD stood up to them and helped create a strong middle class that they have now again destroyed.
The government is just a corporation department, a ghost.
Absolutely not; corporations are artificial constructions and they do not have rights. The people within them have rights, but the idea that corporations themselves do is roughly akin to granting my vacuum cleaner the right to vote and taking it with me to the polls every two years. Regulation is a perfectly acceptable way of holding businesses to quality standards; do you really want to live in a place where entire towns are dealing with birth defects from industrial byproducts in the air, or where you put antifreeze in your cereal because the dairy company decided it was cheaper than milk? It was the systematic deconstruction of regulation that made the housing debacle possible.
If Corps. are people then when they commit felonies we should put them in jail. Oh yea, right their not people.
The shirt summed it up best: "I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one."
so what should a corporation do to protect itself from the over-reaching arm of the government? I give you Gibson Guitars as a prime example.
The "over-reaching arm of the government" argument isn't enough to justify complete deregulation or lobbying; situations like the raid on Gibson are unfortunate, and the government was unneccessarily heavy-handed in its enforcement of the Lacey Act. I also believe that laws like the Lacey Act need to be better phrased so as to prohibit manufacture of products with prohibited components rather than sale and possession or use of such products. That said, I would much rather deal with occasional missteps by the government (especially when such missteps create this much blowback) than systematic outsourcing, employee abuse, and consumer abuse like we have now.
There are far too many in congress that have never run a business and therefore have no clue as to the impact some of the legislation they create has against businesses. Too many times someone says "there ought to be a law against that" then bam legislation and the then followed by unintended consequences. I am not saying, nor have I ever believed in total deregulation, but businesses must be able to lobby congress and explain the result of the actions they are about to or have already taken. I find it ironic that you are willing to accept some "missteps" against some companies by the government but you will not accept the same "missteps" by police against individuals.
The problem is that lobbying as it stands today isn't about really briefing Congress and the president about the impacts of legislation; it's more about anything to promote profits. I do believe experts in the field should look at unintended chilling effects of regulation on industry, but we should not be relying on lobbyists to provide these evaluations. Otherwise you have a conflict of interest of the type that has long been recognized by common law and common sense as dangerously unethical.
To school our a#$@es.:) They claim lobbyist allow corporations to 'educate' politicians on the issues. The truth, however, is relatively obvious. Nice peice on this on 60 Minutes last night. Suprised me that after all these years a mainstream media outlet finally caved in to popular opinion and 'broke' the story. They've been involved in it and they've kept it out of the public narrative with frightening efficiency.
BWWWWWAAAAAA!! The POOR (Oxymoron) Corps. breaks my f*cking heart.