Warren: Corporations Giving Bonuses After Tax Bill Passage ‘Plain-Old Politics’

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reacted to corporations announcing they will give their employees bonuses and increase capital investment after the passage of the GOP tax bill by stating the companies already had enough profits to do so if they wanted to and the moves are simply political.

Warren said, “I want to be absolutely clear. I am delighted when workers get more money. I’m glad when it happens at any corporation in America. Yay. But let’s be really clear, if these corporations had wanted to do that, they already had plenty of profits to do it. The idea that this is trickle-down economics at work, rather than just plain-old politics is just wrong. The corporate CEOs have already told us what they’re going to do with this money. I’ll give you an example. Home Depot, right after the Senate passed the tax bill a couple of weeks ago, Home Depot CEO is — executive is interviewed and said, ‘So, what are you going to do with all of this money that Home Depot has? Because they’re going to do really well on this.’ Was it, ‘We’re going to raise wages for our employees?’ Um, no. Was it, ‘We’re going to hire more employees at the Home Depot stores?’ Um, no. Was it, ‘We’re going to build more Home Depots across America?’ Um, no. They said, ‘What we’re going to do is we’re going to do stock buybacks.’ In other words, we’re going to use whatever money comes in to pump up the price of our stock. That works really well for CEOs, and it works really well for wealthy investors. That’s what the game is about for these guys, what they care about is getting this money in so they can boost their stocks prices.”

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