‘Battling Biden’ Delivers Fiery Populist Message in Iowa

Hoping to bolster his long-shot presidential prospects, Vice President Joe Biden delivered a decidedly populist message in Iowa earlier today.

The folks on Capitol Hill have been asking all of the wrong questions, declared Biden, who appeared in Iowa only three days after former Secretary of State and presumed 2016 Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton made an appearance there.

Speaking at a kickoff event in Des Moines for “Nuns on the Bus,” an anti-austerity Catholic social justice organization led by Sister Simone Campbell which hopes to mobilize a large voter turnout in November to counter the disturbing influence of big money on American politics, the 71-year-old vice president questioned whether U.S. corporations were really overtaxed — a mantra echoed by most Republican lawmakers and GOP candidates this fall.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked.

It’s an appropriate question. While the United States has one of the highest marginal corporate tax rates in the world, most corporations don’t come close to paying that rate.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, 288 of the Fortune 500 companies paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over a five-year period between 2008 and 2012 — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate. Moreover, no fewer than twenty-six corporations, including Boeing and General Electric, paid no federal income tax at all during that period while nearly a third of those companies — ninety-three, to be precise — paid an effective tax rate of less than ten percent.

In his remarks to a cheering crowd of about 250 people, Biden also questioned the increasing frequency of corporate tax inversions, a method by which a growing number of U.S.-based companies are moving their headquarters abroad to avoid paying federal taxes.

“Is it appropriate that they can now pick up and move their headquarters to another country to get at a lower tax rate?” he asked. “Can any of you do that?”

In his 25-minute speech, the vice president also addressed the issue of income inequality, saying that it was bad for the country — not only for the middle-class, but for rich and poor alike — and spoke in favor of a higher minimum wage.