Mike Levin: “The amendment to which I referred, which was adopted by the Senate, was aimed at closing down certain abusive tax haven…”

“The amendment to which I referred, which was adopted by the Senate, was aimed at closing down certain abusive tax haven loopholes. We would have taken the money which we would receive by closing down these abuses and applied half of it to the deficit, the other half going to education in areas where we are cutting education. It is unconscionable to me that corporations, too many of them, have renounced their United States citizenship and opened phony offices in Bermuda from which they can then pretend that their businesses operate, keep doing their business here in the United States, using our police departments, our fire departments, our schools, and all of our other services--inverting, as it is called--getting the benefits of citizenship here but avoiding paying taxes. People ask, how come revenues are going down? There are a lot of reasons why revenues are going down. One of them is the tax cuts which were adopted here which were proposed by President Bush. Obviously, a slowing economy has had an effect, too. But one of the other reasons we lost revenues is that we have too many corporations that are avoiding paying their fair share of taxes through a very large number of tax avoidance schemes.”