Political Quotes

“Well, if their tax bill is for their donors, we have a pretty good idea who the beneficiaries of the tax bill are. So the donors are the plutocrats, the superwealthy. It is Wall Street. Very much it is Wall Street because this is really about raising the stock price. I think Mr. Raskin may not have been here when I put this up, but I am going to do it one more time. It has been clear that before the 1980s, 50 percent, maybe 55 percent, 60 percent of the after-tax income of corporations went into creating a bigger corporation, into manufacturing jobs, plant equipment, hiring more people, paying better wages. Beginning in the mid-1980s or so, that began to shift so that, today, exactly the opposite occurs. Maybe 70, 80 percent of the after-tax profits now go into buying back stock, increasing the stock price, higher dividends. Case in point: the corporate tax giveaway in this bill, which is actually--I said earlier it was $1.4 trillion reduction in corporate taxes over the next decade. It is actually $1.3 trillion. My apologies for being incorrect. $1.3 trillion reduction in corporate taxes. For a company like Wells Fargo, a rather major bank, the corporate tax giveaway will give Wells Fargo an 18 percent earnings increase. How does Wells Fargo intend to spend it? Not on jobs. Here is what the CEO of Wells Fargo, Mr. Tim Sloan, said in December of 2017. That is this month. He said: ``Is it our goal to increase return to shareholders, and do we have an excess amount of capital?…”