Bill Pascrell: “Working Americans across the country do not have the benefit of hiring consultants, of shifting their earned income…”

“Working Americans across the country do not have the benefit of hiring consultants, of shifting their earned income around the globe to find the lowest tax rate. And you are standing there, saying you want to help the consumer? It is just the opposite. Many multinational corporations do just that. Corporate inversions allow companies to renege on the obligation to America, eroding the United States tax base and hurting American competitiveness. Who are you with anyway? If you live in a neighborhood and one house--let's say the biggest house on the block--doesn't pay its property taxes, what happens? Everyone understands that the rest of the houses on the block have to make up the difference. The Treasury has taken steps to address inversions, but it is up to Congress to pass legislation that addresses this problem immediately. In the meantime, the bill before us today would weaken the FTC's ability to monitor and enforce against unfair, anticompetitive mergers, and they are all over the place. I blame, partially, the administration, as the former Attorney General did nothing about mergers. While people were trying to get him to resign for other reasons, that would have been a darned good reason. This is not Republican or Democrat, my friends. These are simply the facts, and I can tell you this one report will very, very much crystallize what those facts are.”