Bipartisan Effort To Tackle Inversions
Sen. Chuck Schumer's inversion plan attacks "earnings stripping." Bloomberg: "[Schumer] wants to curb a practice known as 'earnings stripping,' in which companies that engage in inversions load their U.S. operations with debt and reduce their U.S. taxable income by deducting interest cost ... Bret Wells, a law professor at the University of Houston who has studied earnings stripping, said Schumer’s proposal is a meaningful first step that doesn’t go far enough to reduce the advantages available to all foreign-owned companies."
Schumer plan could be part of bipartisan bill: "Lawmakers are concerned about the erosion of the U.S. tax base because with reduced tax revenue it is harder to carry out the functions of government. While lawmakers view inversions as bad, they worry the practice of earnings stripping has the potential to magnify the problem because it makes inversions appealing to companies with primarily U.S. revenue, not simply companies with a large share of foreign revenue ... The [next step] is the Senate Finance Committee. Chairman Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said on Thursday that addressing earnings stripping is 'a key piece of any sound solution' to addressing corporate inversions, and added that he hopes to have 'bipartisan legislation in place come September' to deal with the overall issue."
Hillary Takes a Poll Hit
Hillary Clinton's poll numbers tick down. Politico: "A McClatchy-Marist poll released Thursday shows that support for potential Democratic candidate Clinton has dropped to under 50 percent in head-to-head matchups as support for Republican potential candidates such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is gaining."
But window is closing for a challenger to emerge. Bloomberg's Jonathan Bernstein: "During the invisible primary, potential candidates introduce themselves to party actors and demonstrate their fealty to the party's policy positions, their capacity for running a national campaign and the skills and abilities that promise to make them reliable presidents. They also begin to demonstrate that they can attract enthusiastic support from party voters (before the actual primaries and caucuses), and that they would make solid general election candidates. But not all candidates begin at the same starting line. Hillary Clinton had already achieved pretty much everything on the 2016 nomination checklist by November 2012. By contrast, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, have a lot more to do ... Unless Clinton drops out or encounters unexpected turbulence, it's already pretty late to enter the nomination contest except for the very heaviest of heavyweights."
Green Group Aids Republicans In Midterms
Environmental Defense Action Fund backing select Republicans. Politico: "The Environmental Defense Action Fund is rolling out a seven-figure ad campaign to aid green-minded Republicans in the midterm elections, part of a longer-term effort to find GOP partners on priorities like climate change ... the Action Fund served notice Thursday that it’s willing to champion Republican allies even at the expense of Democrats. It rolled out a $250,000 television, print and digital ad buy promoting Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), whose Democratic challenger, Sean Eldridge, has support from other progressive groups. The group hasn’t publicly identified other Republicans it plans to support..."
Republican districts being helped by Obamacare. Politico: "An estimated 68,000 people got Obamacare coverage here in Kern County, which makes up a portion of [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy’s expansive district in the southern part of [California's Central] valley. As of April, 18,000 of those people had gotten private coverage, many with federal subsidies. Nearly 50,000 enrolled in Medicaid, a number that is still rising. Yet here in Bakersfield, McCarthy is popular ... Still, the longer it takes Republicans to draft and vote on a [replacement] plan — if they do it at all — the more daunting their political and policy problems become. More than 15 million Americans already have coverage under Obamacare..."
