A Loophole Big Enough To Drive Through

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have come up with a solution to fix the impending Highway Trust Fund disaster: to close corporate tax loopholes to pay for it, and try to force Republicans to vote on it in an election year.  Greg Sargent explains:

The crisis in question is the pending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, a transportation and infrastructure fund paid for by gas taxes. The White House has warned that allowing it to run out of money by the end of the summer could cost the country 700,000 jobs and put untold numbers of infrastructure and transit projects on hold — which means a big battle is set for this summer over how to produce the money to avert the pending disaster.

I’m told House Dems — with the support of leader Nancy Pelosi — are set to propose a new way to pay for it: A bill that would attach continued funding for the trust fund to a proposal to raise $20 billion by restricting U.S. multinational corporations from lowering their taxes by moving headquarters abroad.

“This will accomplish two important goals through one legislative action,” Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a leading party strategist who is planning to push the new measure, tells me. “It will deter American companies from deserting U.S. taxpayers, and use the revenue to create jobs here at home.” 

The proposal to block corporations in this fashion is not in itself new. The idea, originally championed by Dem Rep. Sander Levin and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, would block “corporate inversions,” in which a company can merge with an entity abroad and enjoy lower taxes, provided 20 percent of its shares are owned by the foreign company. The Levin proposal would raise the legal hurdle for companies looking to enjoy this loophole, requiring 50 percent ownership by the foreign entity, raising an estimated $19.5 billion in American tax revenues over the next decade.

It's a good plan, but since the vast majority of Republicans are 100% beholden to corporate interests, it will never pass the House.  In fact, I doubt it will even get a vote, because for all the complaining by glibertarian douchebags  in the end they'll vote for corporate profits over roads and highways, just like the rest of the GOP.

It's what they do.  They do not care about governance one single bit.