With Admiral Joe Sestak waging a campaign to fight for America’s small businesses, who will stand up for corporate America? Congressman Toomey (R-Big Business), that’s who. Sure, ExxonMobil, GE and Bank of America combined to make $52 billion in pre-tax income last year and didn’t pay a single penny in corporate income tax to the US government, and 61 percent of US corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1996 through 2000, but what about the rest of our major corporations? Chevron and Ford were forced to pay a whole 1 percent tax on their combined $21.5 billion in profits. This is unacceptable.
Someone has to protect our corporations from the 7 percent average tax rate that they pay, which is why Congressman Toomey has said he wants to “eliminate corporate taxes all together.”
But Congressman Toomey’s support for big business isn’t limited to advocating for their benefits, he’s also fought against small businesses at every turn in the House:
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•Congressman Toomey spent five years in Congress championing efforts that successfully cut the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) budget by 50 percent ($507 million in 2005 vs. $1.1 billion in 2000);
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•Voted to eliminate funding and increase small business fees on one of the SBA’s most popular small business loan program (7(a) loans); and
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•Voted to give only 5 percent of the 2001/2002 tax cuts to small businesses, but 53 percent to the top 1 percent of earners.
Congressman Toomey’s support of big business includes:
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•Helping write the law deregulating Wall Street;
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•Voting for corporate tax loopholes to help big businesses close factories in the United States and ship jobs overseas; and
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•Supporting a flat tax that favors the wealthiest Americans and renders small businesses unable to compete against major corporations.
He’s even beefed up his own small business credentials, to trick them into supporting him (after all, 99 percent of all businesses are small businesses). But don’t worry,
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•The truth is, Congressman Toomey has spent half of his career working for Wall Street and the rest fighting for their special interests in Congress.
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•Congressman Toomey was never a small businessman. His role in the chain of restaurants he cites as his small business experience was as an investor.
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•Congressman Toomey was “still pursuing his financial career in New York City” when he and his partners opened the first restaurant. He later moved to Allentown, but left it to his partners to handle day-to-day operations, before selling all his shares in the company.
