Rising Democrat star Rep. Tim Ryan (OH) told The Hill that he wants to see Congress embrace a “business friendly agenda” before the 2018 elections. Ryan said part of this agenda should include a reduced corporate tax rate.
The lawmaker has held this position for awhile and is not relenting even though his party disagrees with him.
From The Hill:
“To be competitive globally, we have to reduce the corporate tax rate,” Ryan told The Hill in an interview from his Youngstown, Ohio, district office. “We’re just not competitive globally because of that.”Ryan, a fast-rising Democrat from industrial Ohio, is challenging Democrats to take a different approach to big business and work with corporate America to create jobs.”We can’t just be the party of redistribution of wealth; we need to be the party of the creation of wealth in communities all over the country, not to just Silicon Valley, not just Wall Street, but all over.”
As we all know, the Democrats took a YUGE hit last November on all levels, not just the presidency. Ryan caused a rumble on Capital Hill about a week after the election when he challenged Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her role. He lost, but has not stopped trying to encourage “new blood to lead Democrats ahead of the 2018-midterm elections.”
The party has attempted to make changes to win people back, even offering support to pro-life Democrat candidates. Ryan said the party must embrace a pro-business message:
“If we could figure out the big economic question, which really is how do we get wealth out of the coasts and into the industrial Midwest and start creating real jobs by the hundreds, if not by the thousands, in places like I represent that’s a game changer for me.”
As I said, Ryan has held this view for awhile. He told Morning Joe last week that Congress must lower the corporate tax code and simplify the code:
“Let me be clear,” Ryan said. “I don’t think we can be hostile to business. I think, you know, while we can be for a progressive tax code, we can be for an increase in dividends and corporate – other kinds of business taxes – I think we need to simplify the tax code, I think we need to lower the corporate tax rate. We can’t just be the party of redistribution of wealth, we’ve got to be the party of creation of wealth, and not just in Silicon Valley and Wall Street – In Youngstown, in the South – we have to create new wealth in this economy and I really want the Democrats to be the party that’s going to get their arms around this big issue.”—“Right now, we tax companies like this at 35 percent,” he said at a news conference at an Intel Corp. facility in Oregon. “Our competitors to the north … Canada, they tax their businesses at 15 percent. Ireland, you have a lot of Irish here – 12.5 percent. Technology tax rates on companies, I was just informed this morning, in Israel – 6 percent. China: 25 percent, but they actually give you a break in the early years. We’re between 35 and 45 percent on how we tax American businesses. And so one of the big, great problems we have is we’re basically taxing American businesses out of America. We’re making it really hard for American businesses to compete and succeed in the global economy because of our tax system.”
The Republican nonprofit organization American Action Network included Ryan in its ad:
Ryan appreciated the organization picked up on his remarks, but after its release, he stated that corporate tax is just one part of reform. In other words, that’s where his support ends:
Any debate about tax reform must balance a competitive corporate tax rate with provisions that encourage corporate responsibility through higher taxes on capital gains and dividends as well as increased capital investment in America’s workforce. We should be prioritizing provisions like a $1 trillion expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of hardworking Americans, child tax credits, and increased standard deductions that poor and working families have been craving for decades.”
In April, after the White House released its tax reform goals, Ryan lashed out at the provisions except the corporate tax code. He did not like that the ideas did not include “closing special interest loopholes, how to pay for any of it, and how much it will increase our national debt.”
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