Interviews during 2017-2019: on Corporations

Jo Jorgensen: Government over-regulates private businesses

Jo Jorgensen: Loosen. "The government is currently over-regulating private businesses." "Will work to eliminate policies that cripple economic growth."

Howie Hawkins: Tighten. Wants to "socialize the big banks," with public banking at municipal, state, and federal levels and a new Glass-Steagall Act to better regulate banking.

Gloria La Riva: Reregulation of the banking and insurance industries

Gloria La Riva: Breakup large media companies, re-regulate industry

We support public funding of newspapers and magazines. We oppose all efforts to trim "fair use" rights. We call for the repeal of all existing copyright extension laws.

Howie Hawkins: Break up largest banks so that none is too big to fail

Greens believe the legal structure of the corporation is obsolete. At present, corporations are designed solely to generate profit. This legal imperative--profit above all else--is damaging our country and our planet in countless ways. We must change the legal design of corporations so that they generate profits, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or the communities in which the corporation operates.

Howie Hawkins: Amend Constitution: corporations are not persons

The rights established by this Constitution and the laws of the United States of America are exclusively the rights of living, breathing humans, citizens of this country or residing therein. No corporation or other type of association or organization can have the status of a "legal person" and thus cannot derive rights from such status.

Rocky De La Fuente: Eliminate special interest exemptions & corporate welfare

Bernie Sanders: Nothing personal against billionaires, but enough is enough

Mike Bloomberg: $5 trillion in new revenue from high earners & corporations

The proposal includes a repeal of President Trump's 2017 tax cuts for high earners, along with a new 5 percent 'surcharge' on incomes above $5 million per year. It would raise capital gains taxes for Americans earning more than $1 million a year and maintain a limit on federal deductions of state and local tax payments set under the 2017 law, which some Democrats have pushed to eliminate.

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Bloomberg's tax policies would place him in the middle of the pack of his rivals for the Democratic nomination."

Pete Buttigieg: Capitalism is good, but it must be subject to rules

Elizabeth Warren: Use anti-trust to break up anti-competitive businesses

A: You want to run a platform, that's fine. You don't get to run a whole bunch of the businesses as well. You want to run a business, that's fine. You don't get to run the platform. Think of it this way: It's like in baseball. You can be the umpire or you can own one of the teams, but you don't get to be the umpire and own the teams.

Q: If you had your way, Facebook would have to sell off Instagram? Amazon would have to sell off Whole Foods?

A: All those little businesses that they're running, competing businesses. Yep.

Q: Who is the federal government to tell these companies they have to do that?

A: There's anti-trust law. It's been around for more than a hundred years. And the federal government has done this many times, for example, broke up Standard Oil, broke up the great monopolies of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. And the reason for that is so that we can keep a competitive economy.

Elizabeth Warren: Breakup online monopolies; wealth shouldn't be concentrated

Bill de Blasio: Amazon exemplifies abuse of corporate power by leaving NYC

Howard Schultz: Rich should pay higher taxes, and corporations too

A: I should be paying more taxes. And people who are in the bracket of making millions of dollars, or whatever the number might be, should be paying more taxes. I was very vocally against President Trump's corporate tax. Corporate tax rate of 21 percent should have never happened.

Q: What's the appropriate top tax rate?

A: I don't know what the number is, but what I'm suggesting is, I should be paying higher taxes. And I think people across the country are willing to pay higher taxes, but there's a caveat there. When you ask people to pay more taxes, we have to make sure that there is an agreement that your additional tax dollars are going to be spent wisely by the government.

John Delaney: Raise corporate taxes to pay for infrastructure

• Infrastructure: Repatriate tax revenue to fund bipartisan infrastructure package.
• At the top of Delaney's list of priorities, both as a congressman and presidential candidate, is investment in infrastructure.
• A year ago, he wrote a letter urging Trump to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 23 percent in order to fund a $200 billion infrastructure package. In Congress, he strongly opposed the tax reform bill passed by Republicans in 2017 (which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent).
• The tax bill included measures incentivizing companies to bring overseas earnings back to the United States; Delaney argued that the revenue should have been put towards infrastructure spending.
• Each House session he was in Congress, Delaney introduced the Partnership to Build America Act to fund a $750 billion infrastructure package.

Kamala Harris: New fees on banks and financial institutions

• Tax Cuts: Reverse some measures in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Instead, create new direct tax breaks for middle and lower classes.
• Harris has proposed the LIFT the Middle Class Act, which would give a $3,000 refundable tax credit [to the middle class].
• She would pay for the multitrillion-dollar plan by eliminating some of the tax cuts put in place by the Republican-sponsored Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and by creating a new tax or fee on some banks and financial institutions.

Bill de Blasio: Plenty of money in NYC, but it's in the wrong hands

Beto O`Rourke: Raise corporate rates to fund higher education

Elizabeth Warren: Wants workers to choose 40% of corporate boards

Howard Schultz: American Dream can't be accessible only in right zip code

He started at Starbucks in 1982 and served as chief executive from 1987 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2017. He is leaving at a tumultuous moment in Starbucks' history [where Starbucks has ordered racial sensitivity training for all staff].

In a speech to Starbucks shareholders in 2016, Schultz said he feared that the opportunities that allowed him to achieve his American Dream--he grew up in subsidized housing in Brooklyn--have escaped the grasp of too many people. "The American Dream can't be only accessible to people of privilege who are white and live in the right zip code," he said.

Marco Rubio: Big corporations gave out bonuses instead of reinvesting

His golden back-story, as a son of poor immigrants, helps with that--and looks more relevant now than ever. "My relatives are firefighters and nurses and teachers and electricians," he says. "These are people who are not all that excited about the new economy."

Tom Steyer: Trump puts corporate interests ahead of people's interests

Steyer: Those guys disagree with us on almost every point. One of the things we strongly believe is that the people Trump nominated put corporate interests ahead of American interests. We feel it's important to get citizens to be reminded of this common thread: that the new administration doesn't hate working against climate change, they don't hate science--they just love oil and gas profits.

Joe Sestak: Favors increasing corporate tax rate & restoring estate tax

Joe Walsh: Occupy Wall Street is a well-orchestrated Socialist movement

Walsh, who apologized last week after screaming at a constituent during a similar event, was reacting to constituent criticism of the Occupy movement when he let them know how he felt about it, to a mix of applause and boos.

Walsh said that Occupy protesters are "generally spoiled, pampered, unfocused, clueless young people and a smattering of other people who don't understand this country and are advocating anti-American solutions."

When one constituent stood up and pointed out that veterans have participated in the Occupy movement, Walsh brushed it off. "I don't know how many veterans are part of the Occupy protest," he said. "I can't imagine it's many. But anyone who would advocate socialist solutions--they don't understand this country."

Joe Walsh: Index capital gains tax to inflation

"This bill will benefit all Americans and create quality jobs in our communities," said Congressman Walsh. "By not forcing Americans to pay taxes on inflation, we are providing much needed tax relief to American families and freeing up the capital that businesses need to hire more employees."

"This is the type of real action that Washington needs to take to remove impediments to job growth in this country. Throwing more irresponsible stimulus money at the problem is not going to create jobs. Common-sense tax and regulatory reforms like my bill will enable American families and businesses to create jobs now and invest in the future."