Political Quotes

“I do have one more point to make, and the gentleman reminded me of it. In 2004, when we had the repatriation, we told the big corporations they could bring all the offshore money home and pay only a fractional tax on it; they were going to create jobs and so forth. And what happened? They didn't create jobs. They had buybacks. They enriched their executives. They didn't create jobs. The fundamental problem with this analysis is not that corporations don't have enough money to invest, and, therefore, if you give them lower taxes they will have more money to invest; they have plenty of money to invest. They don't see the investment opportunities, and that is a different problem. There is plenty of money to invest. They are rolling in cash. There is not a dearth of investment opportunity. There is not a dearth of investment cash. So if you give them more cash, they will pay their CEOs higher. They will put more money into stock buybacks. The shareholders may benefit, but they won't hire more workers. The economy won't benefit; and we will be taking money away from the middle class and lower-income people, and we will be taking money away from the governments, local governments, that have to spend the money on schools, housing, health, roads and bridges, and so forth to build up this country.”