Political Quotes

“I thank you for that. I am going to shift to another very, very important part of the Republican budget proposal, and that is their total unwillingness to deal with the reality of the revenues that the Federal Government needs in order to continue to provide all of the multitude of services that are part of a modern society: everything from defense to homeland security as well as the medical and social services that we have been talking about. I'm going to put this up, it's a little cute, but I think it pretty much illustrates one of the profound problems in the Republican budget. ``What Do They All Have in Common?'' We've got the unicorn over there, we have Bugs Bunny, and then we have this thing that says the corporate tax rate, 35 percent, large corporations like Exxon. It's a fallacy. Large corporations and small corporations in America don't pay 35 percent corporate income tax. In fact, if one were to take a look at Exxon, in 2008 they had the largest profit of any company in the world. In 2009, they had a profit of about $19 billion and their effective tax rate, how much they actually paid in taxes, was zero. Not 35 percent. Not 30 percent. Not 25, not 20, not 15, not 10, but zero. Now it happens that they're not the only corporation. The Republican proposal actually would make this situation worse. It would take this 35 percent and reduce it to 25 percent. What are we talking about here? Why would we want to do that?…”