Political Quotes

“Madam President, there is an old adage that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The reason it is an old adage is it is true. That is why I introduced the Financial Disclosure to Reduce Tax Haven Abuse Act of 2012. I introduced this months ago. It would require candidates for Federal office and certain Federal employees to disclose any financial interests they or their spouses have in an offshore tax haven. If the bill becomes law, individuals who file financial disclosure reports would be required to list the identity, category of value, and location of any financial interest in a jurisdiction considered to be a tax haven by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary would be required to provide a list of those countries to filers and to consider for its inclusion on the list any jurisdiction that has been publicly identified by the Internal Revenue Service as a secrecy jurisdiction. The American people might be surprised to know that we do not already ask whether candidates and Members of Congress are sheltering their money offshore to avoid paying taxes in America. That is because under current law those individuals--that would be candidates and Members of Congress--are not required to account for where their financial interests are held. Candidates for Federal office, including President, do not have to explicitly disclose their holdings in tax havens. The bill, which I introduced months ago with Senator Franken, would change that.…”