Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank the Senator from Illinois for his leadership in dealing with the offshore tax haven problem. This is not a new issue. It is not a new issue for me. In fact, my Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been exploring the damage the secrecy of offshore tax havens has caused for the nearly two decades we have been looking at this issue trying to change the situation that exists, and it is not a new issue for Senator Durbin. He has been on this issue a long time. Indeed, when President Obama was a Senator, he joined in an effort to bring tax haven abuses to light. Then-Senator Obama, in 2007, was an original cosponsor of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which I introduced with our Republican colleague Senator Coleman, and he said the following: There is no such thing as a free lunch--someone always has to pay. And when a crooked business or a shameless individual does not pay its fair share, the burden gets shifted to others, usually to ordinary taxpayers and working Americans without access to sophisticated tax preparers or corporate loopholes. It was a bipartisan bill aimed at preventing the loss to taxpayers that results from tax-avoidance schemes that use secret tax haven jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands. Those words I quoted remain just as true today as they were in 2007. There is indeed no free lunch.…”