Democrats more determined to stop Pfizer inversion than ISIS

You can usually tell where people's hearts really are by what animates them. There are situations when they know they're supposed to look and sound passionate. And then there are situations in which they really are. There was much fire-breathing on Capitol Hill yesterday, not because of the growing urgency to stop the next ISIS beheading, burning, drowning or mass shooting - but because a U.S. corporation found a way not to pay so much in taxes. That, my friends, will not do:

A $160 billion megamerger announced Monday would turn U.S. pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer Inc. into an Irish drug company, using a controversial tactic that allows companies to dodge billions of dollars in corporate taxes by renouncing their U.S. citizenship. Pfizer’s deal with Botox-maker Allergan, which would create the world’s largest drugmaker, immediately sparked criticism from Democrats and Republicans in Congress who agree that such deals are problematic but have so far not taken legislative action against them. They slammed the tax loophole called an “inversion,” in which a U.S.-based company buys or merges with a foreign company and moves its headquarters to the country with a lower tax rate. “By nominally moving overseas while continuing to take all the benefits of a U.S. company, Pfizer is gaming the system and will avoid paying its fair share of U.S. tax dollars,” Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement. “It’s time for Congress to get serious, close the loopholes, and prevent these kind of inversions from happening in the future.” Republicans also denounced the deal, which would slash Pfizer’s corporate tax rate to 17 or 18 percent, according to company leaders, compared with its effective 25 percent rate. But some were reluctant to place the blame on companies. “Other nations have restructured their tax code to make themselves more attractive to multinational corporations, and we must do the same so American businesses can compete on a level playing field,” said Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), a senior member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

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As is often the case with media stories that are supposed to be straight news, some of the Post's languages gives away it's bias. Tax-dodging? Renounce its citizenship? Well this all sounds perfectly ghastly. Even labeling the move "controversial" gives away a bias because something is only controversial to you if you take seriously the people huffing about it. Let's deal with a couple of things. First, corporations are not citizens. Individuals are. I realize this will cause liberals to scream, "Oh yeah? Well then what about Citizens United?" Sure. The individual citizens who run corporations don't give up their First Amendment rights when they act under the umbrella of the corporation, but it's still the individuals and not the corporation who enjoy citizenship status. What Pfizer has done here is establish its headquarters in Ireland because Ireland has a much lower corporate tax rate than the U.S. And for those U.S. politicians who find it outrageous that they would seek to pay less in taxes to the U.S. Treasury, I'd like to know: What do you think entitles you to the money these people earn and you do not earn? Why do you think it benefits anyone - other than yourselves - if money earned by Pfizer is sucked up by the government rather than kept by Pfizer? This gets to a fundamental premise that the political class and most of the media simply accept unquestioningly, which is that money moving from the private sector to the public sector equals virtue, and any private-sector entity that tries to minimize this movement of money is guilty of horrors. Bolshevik. I'm no fan of pharmaceutical companies for a whole host of reasons, but in a strict economic sense I'd rather see a dollar controlled by a drug company executive than a dollar controlled by Harry Reid every day of the week and twice on Sunday. At least they have to spend their money doing something productive in order to make money. The idea that government does good with money and corporations do bad with money is simply a product of cultural ignorance about business, government and economics. Anyway, if any of you saw the same determination from Democrats to stop ISIS as they're showing here to stop corporate inversions, let me know. I sure didn't. They're quite happy with "strategic patience" and "leading from behind" when it comes to bloodthirsty terrorists, but let a corporation seek to lower its tax bill . . . time for action! I honestly don't know how these people sleep at night.