Above Graphic: From the Public Citizen report.
Despite nearly 200 companies speaking out against voting law changes in Texas, other states, America’s largest corporations are just paying lip service while funding the very voter suppression Republicans.
A new report (pdf) released Monday morning by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that during the 2020 election cycle alone, U.S. corporations donated $22 million to Republican architects of voter suppression bills that are advancing through state legislatures nationwide.
Jake Johnson reports, ‘Follow the money’: Corporations gave $50 million to GOP lawmakers behind voter suppression onslaught:
Since 2015, AT&T, Comcast, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, and other big businesses have donated a combined $50 million to state Republican lawmakers who are currently supporting voter suppression bills across the United States—generous political spending at odds with recent corporate efforts to rebrand as defenders of voting rights.
Corporate money to lawmakers supporting voter suppression:
AT&T – $810,915
Comcast & NBC Universal – $439,700
UnitedHealth – $411,200
Walmart – $376,617
State Farm – $315,370
Pfizer – $308,085
Koch – $293,000
Verizon – $246,075
Spread their shame.https://t.co/vnPJlbnOG3
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 5, 2021
“AT&T [since 2015] has given the most, $811,000,” Public Citizen found, citing data from The National Institute on Money in Politics. “AT&T is followed by Altria/Philip Morris, Comcast, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, State Farm, and Pfizer. Household names that fell just out of the top 25 list… include Nationwide ($182,000), Merck ($180,000), CVS ($174,000), John Deere ($159,000), and Caterpillar ($157,000).”
“This is why you follow the money, not the good PR,” Public Citizen tweeted.
The group’s findings came after a number of prominent corporations—including AT&T, Comcast, and Georgia-based companies Coca-Cola and Delta—issued statements denouncing a sweeping Georgia voter suppression measure only after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law last month.
Despite vocal demands for them to speak out and use their influence to fight the bill, those companies were largely quiet as the measure made its way through Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature.
Between 2015 and 2020, according to Public Citizen, corporations donated more than $10.8 million to Georgia Republicans who are supporting the 26 voter suppression bills that have been introduced in the state’s legislature this year. Corporations have also donated big to voter suppression advocates in Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas.
“From coast to coast, politicians that Corporate America helped elect are pushing racist voter suppression laws,” Rick Claypool, research director for Public Citizen’s president’s office and one of the authors of the new report, told Common Dreams.
“No matter how many PR statements Big Business puts out, its complicity with the anti-democratic forces that want to make voting harder is clear,” Claypool added. “Corporations should keep their money out of our democracy—and Congress must put the people back in charge by swiftly passing the For The People Act.”
According to the latest tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, legislators have introduced 361 bills with vote-restricting provisions in 47 states this year, and five have become law.
In the wake of the January 6 Capitol insurrection by a mob of Trump supporters, many large corporations vowed to temporarily suspend all political giving as they faced backlash for financially supportingRepublican members of Congress who helped provoke the attack with brazen lies about the 2020 presidential election.
Bloomberg reports, already some of the business community that ran from politics after the pro-Trump riot on January 6 have quietly come crawling back or are expected to do so soon.
But Public Citizen argued Monday that such face-saving efforts—as well as belated disavowals of voter suppression measures—”will amount to a meaningless gesture if corporations continue to bankroll the bills’ supporters with future campaign contributions.”
“The days in which corporate America can fund politicians and then claim no responsibly for their actions may be coming to an end,” the group said. “Corporations seeking to demonstrate their reverence for our democracy could best do so by ending their attempts to influence the outcomes of elections at the federal and state levels.”
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Here’s the reason why: the Washington Post reports, “Dozens of America’s biggest businesses paid no federal income tax — again”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/05/corporations-federal-taxes/
Fifty-five of the nation’s largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in profits last year, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank.
LINK: https://itep.org/55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-tax/
In fact, they received a combined federal rebate of more than $3 billion, for an effective tax rate of approximately negative 9 percent.
“Their total corporate tax breaks for 2020, including $8.5 billion in tax avoidance and $3.5 billion in rebates, comes to $12 billion,” according to the study’s authors, Matthew Gardner and Steve Wamhoff.
The findings also underscore the favorable tax environment for big businesses in the wake of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Twenty-six corporations have paid no federal income taxes since 2017, according to the report, including such household names as Nike, FedEx and Dish Network. Combined, the 26 companies have booked more than $77 billion in profits since 2018, while receiving nearly $5 billion in rebates, for an effective three-year tax rate of negative 6 percent.
“By all appearances, the companies described in this report appear to be using entirely legal means to reduce their tax bills,” lead author Matthew Gardner said via email. But that doesn’t mean the companies are “blameless,” he added. “Many of the tax provisions these companies are using exist because they themselves have lobbied heavily for their creation.”
[T]here’s little evidence demonstrating that these [tax] provisions actually boost investment or R&D, Gardner says. Following the Trump tax cuts, for instance, many businesses opted to send cash to their shareholders and lay off employees rather than make long-term investments.
Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say corporations are paying too little in taxes, according to Gallup polling.