No. 1, ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world. In 2009, ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits, and not only did ExxonMobil avoid paying any Federal income taxes that year, they actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. Well, do you think maybe we might want to ask ExxonMobil to pay a little in taxes so we do not have to throw children off their health insurance? Maybe.
Bank of America. Last year, Bank of America, the largest bank in America, received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS even though it made $4.4 billion in profits and just a couple of years ago received a bailout from the Federal Reserve in the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. Well, what do you know about that? We are bailing out the largest banks in this country, whose greed caused the recession, and then they get a rebate from the IRS rather than paying any taxes. Yet our Republican friends think the solution to deficit reduction is not to ask Bank of America to pay its fair share but to end Medicare as we know it and force low-income seniors to pay substantially more for their health care.
No. 3, General Electric. Over the past 5 years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS. I do not know. What do you think? Do you think we should ask GE maybe to help us out just a little bit with deficit reduction?
Chevron, a major oil company, received a $19 million refund from the IRS after it made $10 billion in profits.
Last year, Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS.
And on and on it goes.
Valero Energy.
Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid only 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion. Gee, most Americans would be pretty happy to pay 1.1 percent of their income in taxes. But then again, they are not Goldman Sachs.
Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, Carnival Cruise Lines.
On and on and on. You have large, extremely profitable corporations that either pay nothing in taxes or get a rebate from the IRS. Maybe -- just maybe -- when we talk about deficit reduction, we might want to ask those people to help us out rather than go after the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor.
Large corporations today are sitting on a recordbreaking $2 trillion in cash. The problem is not that corporations are taxed too much; the problem is that consumers do not have enough money to buy their products, and the Republican agenda would make that far worse. Corporate tax revenue last year was down by 27 percent compared to 2000 even though corporate profits are up 60 percent over the last decade. These guys make more and more money; their contribution to the Treasury goes down.
When we talk about how we can -- in a fair way, in a responsible way -- deal with our deficit and our national debt, man, here is one very clear example, as shown in this picture. Here you have, in the Cayman Islands, a building. I think it is a four-story building, and it looks like a normal-size four-story building. Yet it has 18,857 companies that call this building their home. Now, one of two things is going on: Either these guys are very, very crowded -- 18,000 corporations in this one four-story building; maybe they are very crowded, and we should call in the zoning people in the Cayman Islands to check that out -- or maybe something else is going on. Of course, what is going on is this is a total, absolute fraud. This is a building that does not house anybody. It is a phony address that 18,000-plus corporations use for the explicit purpose of not paying taxes to the United States of America.
There are studies out there which suggest that large corporations and wealthy individuals are avoiding $100 billion in taxes every year by setting up these offshore tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. Maybe, maybe, maybe, before we tell young people they cannot go to college or single moms they cannot get childcare for their kids or low-income seniors we are going to cut back on their nutrition, maybe, just maybe, we might want to end this blatant outrage, which costs us $100 billion every single year.
In 2005, one out of four large corporations paid no income taxes at all even though they collected $1.1 trillion in revenue. What about looking there for revenue? Our Republican friends say: Oh, no, no, no. We can't do that. We have to force elderly people to pay more in Medicare, throw kids off Medicaid.
Now, what is a very interesting point -- and, frankly, we are all politicians. You do not get elected to the Senate if you do not understand something about politics. What I do not understand -- and certainly what President Obama needs to understand -- is that the overwhelming majority of the American people do not agree with the Republican approach, which says: Give tax breaks to billionaires and go after the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That is not just Bernie Sanders talking. I am not much into polls, to be honest with you, but I think it is important to just try to get a little bit of a reflection of where the American people are coming from.
According to a recent Boston Globe poll -- a couple weeks ago, the Boston Globe did a poll in the State of New Hampshire and was mostly interested in the Presidential campaign, how Presidential candidates are doing in New Hampshire, but they asked some other questions. In New Hampshire -- I know because they are a neighbor of mine -- they are the big antitax State. They are the conservative State in New England. Here is what the folks in New Hampshire said in that recent poll.
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