Today the Washington Post released a 4,000-word investigative piece into the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, including how cost-effective and influential we’ve been.
Perhaps surprisingly it was mostly fair to our organization, if not a little obsessed with our fundraising efforts. It was not as fair to the issues we cover.
The author’s fell prey to the usual media and government assumptions: that we’re just trying to help criminals and the uber-wealthy hide their assets from the noble government tax collectors.
In reality, we fight for tax competition because it protects all of us. When governments are forced to compete for citizens and investment, they produce better tax laws, regulate more efficiently, and spend more responsibly.
Regardless of the author’s take on the issues, however, what is clear from the article is that we are very effective at what we do. Even our opponents agreed. See what I mean:
Congressional staffers and international experts on the offshore industry said the center was a formidable foe with access to key players in Washington.
“They’ve been around for years – they are very mysterious,” said Elise Bean, former staff director and chief counsel of Levin’s Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which started investigating tax havens in 2001. “They travel all around the world, and they have had a tremendous impact.”
…
“They were very effective at painting the OECD’s work as end-times are here for tax competition, and we’re going to have European tax rates imposed upon the whole world if the OECD’s work continued,” said Will Davis, the former head of OECD public affairs in Washington.
Former Senator Levin, a long-time antagonist of tax competition and financial privacy, also questioned our patriotism:
Former senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), once one of the leading voices in Congress on tax haven abuses, said in a recent interview that the center’s activities run counter to America’s values and undermine the nation’s ability to raise revenue.
“It’s like trading with the enemy,” said Levin, whose staff on a powerful panel investigating tax havens regularly faced public challenges from the center. “I consider tax havens the enemy. They’re the enemy of American taxpayers and the things we try to do with our revenues – infrastructure, roads, bridges, education, defense. They help to starve us of resources that we need for all the things we do. And this center is out there helping them to accomplish that.”
…”It’s very, very discouraging that Americans would do that.”
What’s a little accusation of treachery among political opponents?
But if the author of so much awful legislation is still that bitter about us two years into his retirement, we must be doing something right.
