David Obey: “every week when I go home to my district and also here in my office, I talk to business people who work hard, who worry…”

“every week when I go home to my district and also here in my office, I talk to business people who work hard, who worry about their communities, their investors, and their workers. They try to produce a good product. They do their duty as citizens. They pay their fair share of taxes and they help pull the wagon, as a Senator from the other body often describes it. They help pull the wagon and meet their share of community and national responsibilities. When they see corporations maneuver the Tax Code and avoid paying taxes by ostensibly moving their address while they do not move their operations, they move their address to exotic places such as Bermuda, they ask me, What in God's name are you guys doing? When are you going to put a stop to it? They resent carrying their fair share of the load while somebody else is ducking their responsibility to carry theirs. So the DeLauro amendment which was offered in committee, which I was pleased to cosponsor, simply said, and it is an outrageous idea to some Members, I suppose, it simply said to these companies, Look, buster, if you are going to ignore your responsibilities to this society and the taxpayers who help see to it that you get police protection, the transportation system that you need to sell and move your products, if they see those folks abandoning their duty, they want us to do something about it.”