Scott Klinger: Corporations pay less in taxes than Buffett and Romney

AFP

Corporations pay a lower effective tax rate than Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney, but you wouldn’t know it from all the complaints that our corporate tax rate puts our country at a competitive disadvantage. Last year, U.S. corporations paid just 12.1 percent of their earnings in federal corporate income taxes. Buffett’s tax rate is 17.4…

Kaine: ‘All of the above’ on energy

AFP

The black-white debate on energy production between Republicans and Democrats generally speaking comes down to the merits of oil production vs. clean energy. It doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition, though. “We need to use every domestic source that we have. But I think we ought to be preparing for a long-term shift toward…

Karen Kwiatkowski: What does Bob Goodlatte have against the Internet?

AFP

While we don’t believe 10-term congressman Goodlatte speaks Mandarin, he has a lot in common with the Communists in Beijing, at least when it comes to regulating and controlling the Internet. Goodlatte is the author of the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, a costly regulatory attack on the Internet.  It is supposed to…

McDonnell outlines energy agenda

AFP

Gov. Bob McDonnell unveiled today a series of recommendations for the 2012 General Assembly session that will advance Virginia’s role as the energy capital of the East Coast. “Virginia is blessed with a bounty of natural resources that can aid in our nation’s growing need for affordable and reliable energy sources,” McDonnell said. “From the…

Frank Knapp Jr.: The Corporate Attorneys Full Employment Act

AFP

Congress is considering a proposal that portends to offer commonsense rules to affect how federal agencies analyze costs and benefits. Instead it will be disastrous to taxpayers, small and mid-sized businesses and the country as a whole. The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011 (RAA), which passed in the U.S. House, provides extensively detailed procedures for…

Margot Dorfman: Big business tax holidays are bad for small business, bad for America

AFP

If small business owners decided to stop paying our fair share of taxes, we’d be sent to jail. Big business tax dodgers want Congress to reward them with a tax holiday. The U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce strongly opposes legislation in Congress that would reward U.S. multinational corporations with massive, unwarranted tax discounts to bring…

Robert Hurt: House passes more jobs, regulatory-relief bills

Robert Hurt

With unemployment remaining unacceptably high across the Fifth District and 14 million Americans without a job, the House has been working since the start of the 112th Congress to pass legislation that would remove the government as a roadblock to job creation and reverse the job-destroying policies of the past two and a half years….