The Patriot Post® · GOP Widens Split With Corporate America

By Suzanne Bowdey

If you lie down with Democrats, you wake up with taxes. That’s the painful lesson corporate America is learning after dumping Republicans for an extreme agenda that just happens to come with a sky-high price tag. Maybe CEOs thought they could bash the GOP’s social policy and still enjoy the benefits of the Republicans’ free-market favor. Think again, conservatives scoff. After betraying the GOP on everything from the border to abortion, election integrity, and transgenderism, the days of Republicans having Big Business’s back are over.

Now, staring down Joe Biden’s crushing economic agenda, CEOs have come crawling back. But maybe it’s time that Big Business felt the pain that its over-the-top politicking has wrought. “If corporate America wants to carry the water for the Left’s woke policies, let them be burdened with the Left’s tax policies,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued. When businesses embrace the social justice wokeism that’s at odds with American values, it’s become clear over these last few years that they won’t have the GOP’s support. And right now, looking at Joe Biden’s plans for a corporate tax hike, they’re going to miss it.

As Politico points out, “For many of the [Democratic] Party’s lawmakers, raising the corporate rate is a foregone conclusion, and only the beginning.” Big Business, they warn, “will face far tougher sledding” if the president’s party wins in November. After slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% under Donald Trump, Biden is chomping at the bit to put the squeeze back on corporations. The president, who’s lobbying to raise the tax to at least 28% “has also proposed more than $1 trillion in other business tax increases, including quadrupling a new charge on stock buybacks, expanding a minimum tax on some companies and hiking levies on foreign profits,” Politico warns.

But if executives think Republicans will bail them out, they’ve got another thing coming. “There’s a bubbling-up concern that we should not be doing the bidding of corporate America,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said. Personally, he’d be in favor of raising the corporate rate to at least 25% “if it means being able to extend breaks for individuals and small businesses.” Frankly, he told reporter Brian Faler, “I’d like to see corporations getting with the program and saving America…”

Other Republicans feel likewise. After years of watching corporate radicals bet the farm on the woke wars, the last thing they want to do is come to the rescue of people who aligned themselves with a group of socialist Democrats who spent Biden and Obama’s terms destroying the capitalism that made our country prosperous.

“Every time [companies want] favorable tax policy, they turn to the Republicans,” Perkins told Roy on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “I think we should [let them] live with the Democrats fiscal policies…”

“You’re referring to an issue that has become a little bit of a lightning rod,” the Texas conservative replied, admitting that he’s become a focal point for suggesting, “Look, there’s no rate that’s sacrosanct.” And he firmly believes that. “I think everything should be on the table now,” Roy insisted. “… When the tax reform was put in place in 2017 under President Trump, there were a number of tax provisions, many of which are going to expire next year. You’re going to hear a lot of debate about the tax policy, but the corporate rates were made permanent at 21%. That is a significant reduction with respect to making us competitive globally. I support that generally … but to your point, I am tired of corporations taking us for granted, tired of corporations going and taking subsidies to go out and enrich themselves — whether it’s [through] Obamacare and insurance subsidies or the Inflation Reduction Act, [and] so-called subsidies for the energy policies.”

As far as he’s concerned, it’s time for Republicans to “use [their] leverage to force corporations to start being America first, centered on making sure they’re delivering products.” They need to “drop all this ESG crap,” Roy argued, and “stop all your woke nonsense, where June is selling me gay M&Ms or whatever you’re trying to do. Just do your job — [then] come back and talk to me about a competitive corporate rate.”

At the end of the day, Roy explained, no Republican is going to burn down the economy to make a point. “I’m going to fight making sure we have competitive tax rates for the good of all Americans. I do believe we need that.” But compromise is a two-way street, he reminded people. “I’m not going to rubber-stamp what K Street and what the Chamber of Commerce says when they’re not willing to work with us to save America and to stand up and make America first.”

Agreed, Perkins said. In fact, he believes it’s time to “focus in on small businesses, the mom and pops that really employ a lot of people and make the local economies hum. … I encourage people to shop at those places as opposed to the big box stores that have values that contradict what we’re teaching our children. But for years we’ve had these big corporations [advocating] the social policies of the Left [and] forcing those on Americans. But then they turn to the Republicans wanting favorable tax policies. So I [like] your approach of using that as leverage to say, ‘Hey, you want a fair playing field? Then just do business.’ If you make widgets, make widgets and let the Left carry their own social policy.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.