Letter to Democratic Senators on Stock Buybacks

Dear Senator,

Please see my recent column on the practice of stock buybacks. This would be an effective point to raise to aggressively push back against the Republican tax plan, which would only provide corporations more capital to burn buying back their own stocks. If they want the tax cuts to get more capital for investment, why have they spent more than $7 trillion since 2003 buying back their own stock? (Which is a way of burning capital.) The answer is it enhances the value of their executive compensation package.

(See Steven Clifford’s book The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it).

It would be beneficial for you to inject this argument into the current Senate debate on the McConnell bill that cuts income for the people in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and the big corporate firms.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

(This letter was sent via email to 23 Democratic Senators on 11/20/17)