#GOPTaxScam Two Years Later: “A Lot of Stock Buybacks” for Corporate Shareholders & “Negligible Benefits” for Workers

“Companies Have Spent Nearly Three Times as Much on Additional Dividends and Stock Buybacks… Than on Increased Investment” & Are “On Track” to Blow Through 2018 Buyback Record

Every GOP Senator Voted for Their Party’s Tax Scam, Sparking Unprecedented Corporate Buybacks

This week marks two years since Senate Republicans pushed their tax scam through Congress, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will continue to highlight how their deeply unpopular legislation put corporate special interests and the wealthiest Americans ahead of hardworking families.

Two years ago, Senate Republicans gave giant corporations the best gift they could have asked for — tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks. However, instead of using this “windfall to corporate America” to invest in workers, giant corporations funneled the giveaway into stock buybacks to benefit executives and wealthy shareholders, all while cutting employee bonuses and laying off workers.

Rather than rewarding hardworking employees or putting profits towards new capital spending as they had promised, “big companies are holding record levels of unused cash” while “higher rates of growth and business investment and a shrinking deficit… have largely failed to materialize.”

“Senate Republicans’ tax giveaway was a windfall for Wall Street and a victory for wealthy corporate CEOs and shareholders, but the benefit for hardworking families was negligible at best,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “Republican senators swore this handout would boost the economy and spur business investment, but two years later their promises have fallen flat while hanging workers out to dry.”

Here’s how the “biggest winners” from Senate Republicans’ tax giveaway used their windfall to boost their own bottom line at their employees’ expense:

• Vox: “The GOP tax cuts didn’t pay for themselves. They did, however, deliver a lot of stock buybacks.”

• Axios: “Companies made a record $1.1 trillion in stock buybacks in 2018 and are on track to surpass that number this year.” 

• New York Times: “handouts to workers amounted to a relatively small share of the roughly $200 billion in federal income taxes that corporations avoided”

• Vox: “the Republican tax law was a lopsided giveaway to the corporate sector while offering negligible benefits for American workers”

• New York Times: “From the first quarter of 2018, when the law fully took effect, companies have spent nearly three times as much on additional dividends and stock buybacks, which boost a company’s stock price and market value, than on increased investment.”

• NBC News: “companies poured a hefty portion of the tax windfall into buying back shares, a move designed to at least temporarily boost stock prices, which benefits executives and other large stockholders. And buybacks, evidently unlike bonuses or wage increases, will certainly continue”

• CBS News: U.S. companies spent record $1 trillion buying back own stock this year

• CNN: Tax cut scoreboard: Workers $6 billion; Shareholders $171 billion

• Washington Post: “The benefits promised by the bill’s supporters — higher rates of growth and business investment and a shrinking deficit — have largely failed to materialize”

• New York Times: Trump’s Tax Cuts in Hand, Companies Spend More on Themselves Than on Wages

• POLITICO: “Some of the biggest winners from President Donald Trump’s new tax law are corporate executives who have reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock”

• CNN: “Corporate America rewarded investors by rolling out $1 trillion of stock buybacks in 2018. Yet a lasting boom in job-creating investments has yet to materialize.”

• New York Times (Editorial): Are Corporate Tax Cuts Raising Pay? Yes, for Bosses

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