Yesterday, billionaire Carl Icahn, who has made his fortune as a ruthless corporate raider, issued a clear demand to Congress: cut corporate tax rates or face a whirlwind of outside spending from his new $150 million super PAC.
"I believe the time has come to also hold Senators and Congressmen accountable for the current gridlock in Congress that prevents important legislation from being passed," Icahn wrote. "This is why I'm currently preparing to form a Super PAC with an initial commitment of $150 million from me personally."
As Paul Blumenthal reports for The Huffington Post, Icahn wants Congress to pass legislation that would allow corporations to bring home at a huge tax discount the $2 trillion that's currently being stashed in tax havens. Not coincidentally, Icahn is one of the biggest investors in Apple, which most notoriously keeps nearly $200 billion in profits abroad.
The billionaire argues that new policy framework advanced by Senators Rob Portman and Chuck Schumer would discourage the controversial practice of "corporate inversions," in which a company acquires a foreign entity and then transfers its central business operations to that entity-thus avoiding domestic corporate taxes. However, Blumenthal notes that their proposal would allow corporations to funnel money back into the country at an obscenely low one-time tax rate, and that there are several other ways-such as a proposal from Senator Dick Durbin-to avoid such corporate inversions.
In order to twist the arm of Congress members who can fast-track the legislation, Icahn has brazenly threatened to dump millions to unseat them in their next elections. Obviously, this has angered good-government advocates.
"As surely as billionaires like to own sports teams as a form of conspicuous consumption," Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said, "we can expect them increasingly to fund personal super PACs as a form of self-aggrandizement-as well as to drive forward policies on everything from taxation to gambling to advance their own bottom lines."
That Icahn even has the ability to dole out such a threat is a clear testament to the erosion of campaign-finance law in the wake of Citizens United. And if Icahn's strategy works, it'll be the starkest rebuttal of Justice Anthony Kennedy's deciding opinion from that case, in which he boldly wrote, "We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."