Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2015
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
My amendment would prohibit Federal contracts from going to entities incorporated in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands--the two nations most often abused as tax havens.
In the past few weeks, this body has accepted similar provisions for the Department of Defense Appropriations bill; the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill; and the Energy and Water bill. The latter passed on a rollcall vote.
As before, we should not be spending taxpayers' money on Federal contracts for companies that have renounced their American citizenship in favor of an island tax haven.
Let me quote from an article from Saturday's Washington Post by Allan Sloan, a senior-editor-at-large from Fortune, and the title of the article is: ``Tax-Dodging Firms Are Sticking Us with the Bill.''
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I mentioned Mr. Sloan's article of this past weekend, and I just want to read this quote because I think it really puts this whole issue into perspective:
How much mone are we talking about inverters sucking out of the U.S. Treasury? There is no number available for the tax revenue loss that is caused by the inverters and the never-heres so far, but it is clearly in the billions. Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation projects that failing to limit inversions from evading their responsibility like this will cost the Treasury at least another $19.5 billion over 10 years and possibly much, much more.
At a time when we struggle here day by day to look for the resources to extend unemployment benefits, to pass a highway trust fund, to increase the minimum wage, to increase the dollars for biomedical research, to look for funds for education in this Nation for our children, we have corporations that are siphoning off $19.5 billion. Not only do they do that, but they take with them, and we give to them, billions in Federal contracts. No more should we do it.
I and others long fought for this. We have passed through the appropriations process a ban on Federal contracts for U.S. companies that acquire businesses in lower tax jurisdictions, and then they claim that their headquarters are there despite still being U.S. companies. We can send another strong statement to these companies today as we have already done on Defense, on Energy and Water, on Transportation-HUD, by coming together and passing this amendment. I urge all of my colleagues to support it. Tell them that they are not allowed to give up their American citizenship and, yet, claim it for billions in Federal contracts.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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