CEO's Demand Cuts To Poor, While Reaping Billions In Government Contracts

[presence]

WASHINGTON -- The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.

The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies' tax bills.
The CEOs are part of a campaign run by the Peter Peterson-backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to spend at least $30 million pushing for a deficit reduction deal in the lame-duck session and beyond.
During the past few days, CEOs belonging to what the campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council -- most visibly, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell's David Cote -- have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.
As part of their push, they are advocating a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks" -- money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.
Yet the CEOs are not offering to forgo federal money or pay a higher tax rate, on their personal income or corporate profits. Instead, council recommendations include cutting "entitlement" programs, as well as what they call "low-priority spending."
Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.
Just three of the companies -- GE, Boeing and Honeywell -- were handed nearly $28 billion last year in federal contracts alone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...ef=mostpopular

[VBRonPaulFan]

panem et circenses. these fellas know that all they have to do is get people bickering between each other about little tweaks here and there to keep the current system in place, the system in which they currently make a killing at the expense of all Americans.

and you know what? it'll work. people will bicker over little cuts to entitlements or warfare which will be meaningless and do nothing to stop the collapse, or talk about little tweaks to the tax code which is meaningless and laughable considering the income tax system is inherently unjust.

[Zippyjuan]

True of all programs- people favor budget cuts- just not in "their" pet programs. Every program is somebody's (or some interest's) pet program.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/budge...ry?id=12279916

But overall, there is little impetus to pull away programs popular with Americans. While polls show most of the public agrees that the deficit should be reduced, people aren't as warm to the idea of increasing taxes or chipping away at costly programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Eighty-five percent of those polled in an AP-CNBC poll released Tuesday said the enormous budget deficit would harm future generations, but even so, 46 percent said education, health and energy programs should grow even if it worsens the deficit. Forty-seven percent said they should be cut to bring down the deficit.

"I don't think the political will is there yet when it comes to what I consider to be the major problem, and that's spending," said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the conservative Cato Institute. "Certainly Democrats don't want to cut spending. At the same time, while tax cuts are good for the economy, good for the private sector, Republicans at the same time need to focus just as much, if not more, on cutting spending, and I think there's still an unwillingness on the part of most policymakers to square with the American people on the substantial cuts that need to be made."

[Zippyjuan]

True of all programs- people favor budget cuts- just not in "their" pet programs. Every program is somebody's (or some interest's) pet program.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/budge...ry?id=12279916

But overall, there is little impetus to pull away programs popular with Americans. While polls show most of the public agrees that the deficit should be reduced, people aren't as warm to the idea of increasing taxes or chipping away at costly programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Eighty-five percent of those polled in an AP-CNBC poll released Tuesday said the enormous budget deficit would harm future generations, but even so, 46 percent said education, health and energy programs should grow even if it worsens the deficit. Forty-seven percent said they should be cut to bring down the deficit.

"I don't think the political will is there yet when it comes to what I consider to be the major problem, and that's spending," said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the conservative Cato Institute. "Certainly Democrats don't want to cut spending. At the same time, while tax cuts are good for the economy, good for the private sector, Republicans at the same time need to focus just as much, if not more, on cutting spending, and I think there's still an unwillingness on the part of most policymakers to square with the American people on the substantial cuts that need to be made."

The lobbyists will be all over the Capital this week as Congress returns to Washington to fight against any cuts.