Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

My amendment would prohibit Federal contracts issued by agencies under the jurisdiction of this bill from going to entities incorporated in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, the two nations most often abused as tax havens.

This body has accepted similar provisions for the Departments of Defense, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development. As before, we should not spend taxpayer money on Federal contracts that go to companies that have renounced their American citizenship in favor of an island tax haven.

Just this week, Business Week wrote an article examining the loopholes that longstanding American companies like Ingersol Rand, which was founded in Connecticut in 1871, have been exploiting in order to enjoy lucrative government contracts while pretending to reside overseas for tax purposes.

These firms simply should not be allowed to pretend they are an American company when it comes time to get contracts, then claim to be an offshore company when the tax bill arrives.

According to a recent study, 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies used tax havens last year. They stashed nearly $2 trillion offshore for tax purposes, nearly two-thirds of which was hidden away by just 30 firms.

Of the companies who have established subsidies and tax havens, nearly two-thirds have registered at least one in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. The profits these companies claim were earned in these two island nations in 2010 total over 1,600 percent of the country's entire yearly economic output.

These companies take advantage of our education system, our research and development incentives, our skilled workforce, and our infrastructure, all supported by U.S. taxpayers.

We have already acted on the Transportation-HUD bill and Defense. Let us do the same for Energy and Water. Let's support the firms that are staying at home and meeting their obligations and pass this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, ``The ranks of Federal contractors with foreign addresses''--and I am quoting from an article that appeared in Bloomberg this week--``The ranks of Federal contractors with foreign addresses are likely to grow this year as a new stampede of companies escapes the U.S. tax system.'' Escapes the U.S. tax system.

These are companies who are taking their funds, bringing them to Ireland, to the Caymans, to Bermuda because they do not want to pay their fair share of taxes in the United States of America. There isn't a citizen who can get away with that, but we are allowing these companies to do it. And not only that--because it is legal under our Tax Code which has to be reformed, but my God, that is going to take a month of Sundays to get done--in the meantime, they are collecting millions and millions of dollars in Federal contracts.

We are rewarding these arrent corporations who renounce their U.S. citizenship. They go offshore, take their money offshore, and don't pay taxes so that we can do anything about education or biomedical research or any other areas that we have had to cut the budget on so that they can save their money and not pay any taxes. Then we say: Okay, the floodgates are open; come and get a Federal contract. It is wrong and we shouldn't do that.

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

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