ProPublica reported how Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein ensured wealthy private equity underwriters (PEU) would continue paying minimal taxes via their preferred carried interest taxation.
On June 8, 2010 Rubenstein’s cell phone rang as he was speaking to supporters of the Economic Club, at the Phillips Collection. He left the stage to take the call. Among those in the audience was Gary Shapiro, the consumer-electronics lobbyist who was Rubenstein’s travel companion to Japan in the ’80s. After a few minutes, Shapiro recalls, Rubenstein returned and said, “That was a senator. That one call just saved us on carried interest.”PEUReport readers know how Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama curry favor by dining with Mr. Rubenstein and his wife Alice Rogoff. ProPublica also told a number of dinner stories.
The first serious run at removing the carried interest loophole came in 2007. PEUs won. Another attempt occurred in 2010. PEUs won. The next year America learned about the policy making billionaire.
Today elected officials are no closer to righting this wrong. Americans are clearly concerned about our abysmal leaders, who seem to serve billionaires over the common man.
It's been a tough decade since the public learned about carried interest and our elected officials sat on their fattened hands. Thank heaven ProPublica noticed what others have. It's a bipartisan world with lots of love for PEUs. Politicians Red and Blue love PEU.
