President's Column - Congress to pay off the Corporate America

It is a brand-new year, 2003, and the Homeland Security Department is up and running? Well, it’s a thought in someone's mind. No one is sure when it will be a reality and what impact the new department will have on the 170,000 employees and their collective bargaining rights. But what we are dead sure about is what happens to the "patriotic" corporations who will do business with the government. I put that into quotes, because in the passing of the legislation, the Wellstone Amendment was eliminated. This was the amendment voted on by 318 members of the House that would have barred corporations that move to offshore tax shelters like Bermuda from getting federal government contracts related to homeland security. This was eliminated in the last ditch efforts of the Congress to pay off the Corporate America's large campaign donations.

This is tax dodging at its best, and not a bit patriotic. The U.S. Treasury estimates that we lose $70 to 400 billion each year from American Corporations taking advantage of offshore tax shelters. And these resources are needed to pay for the government and to pay for homeland security. For example, Tyco, formerly of New Hampshire, now of avoids paying $400 million a year in U. S. taxes by setting up a shell headquarters offshore but was awarded $182 million in lucrative defense and homeland security related contracts in 2001 alone. If Tyco had paid its tax bill, Congress could have easily paid for 400 explosive detection systems, which are badly needed to protect U. S. travelers at airports around the nation.

Ingersoll Rand, formerly of New Jersey, now also in Bermuda earned as much last year in U.S. defense and homeland security contracts as it avoids in U. S. taxes by renting a mailbox. These taxes could have easily funded the proposed Cyberspace Warning Intelligence Network estimated to cost $30 million, or could buy 400,000 gas masks for American citizens.

Another amendment that eases the burden on American corporations is the one endorsed and enacted by the new Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. It exempts the Eli Lilly company from lawsuits by parents who believe the company's vaccines may have caused their children's autism. How the defense of collective bargaining rights for Federal workers was considered unpatriotic, yet corporate tax dodging is not, escapes my comprehension. These amendments are in the new bill, the agency is not up and running, about 55,000 federal workers may have lost their collective bargaining rights and the country is no safer now than September 10, 2001. All this was done in the name of patriotism and for a secure homeland.