Bernie Sanders is the underdog in the American political race, but he’s quickly gaining momentum as a prime candidate to lead the US, as his no-nonsense, candor approach is appreciated by many – especially the millennial generation.

In response to 80 CEOS recently publishing a letter on the Wall Street Journal lecturing America about deficit reduction and urging them to “act on the deficit and reform Medicare and Medicare,” Sanders had the following to say:

There really is no shame. The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession. Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax havens and outsourcing provisions that their lobbyists have littered throughout the tax code – contributing greatly to our deficit. Many of the CEO’s who signed the deficit-reduction letter run corporations that evaded at least $34.5 billion in taxes by setting up more than 600 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens since 2008. As a result, at least a dozen of the companies avoided paying any federal income taxes in recent years, and even received more than $6.4 billion in tax refunds from the IRS since 2008. Several of the companies received a total taxpayer bailout of more than $2.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Many of the companies also have outsourced hundreds of thousands of American jobs to China and other low wage countries, forcing their workers to receive unemployment insurance and other federal benefits. In other words, these are some of the same people who have significantly caused the deficit to explode over the last four years.

Remaining true to his promise to serve the people as a politician, Sanders responded to the lecture from the American CEO’s by releasing a report detailing how 18 of them have helped blow up the deficit and wreck the economy outsourcing jobs and evading US taxes.

The list of 18 CEO’s follows:

1) Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $1.9 billion tax refund.

Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? Over $1.3 trillion.

Amount of federal income taxes Bank of America would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.6 billion.

2) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $278 million tax refund.

Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $824 billion.

Amount of federal income taxes Goldman Sachs would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.7 billion

3) JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon

Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $416 billion.

Amount of federal income taxes JP Morgan Chase would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.9 billion.

4) General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $3.3 billion tax refund.

Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve? $16 billion.

Jobs Shipped Overseas? At least 25,000 since 2001.

5) Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $705 million tax refund.

American Jobs Cut in 2010? In 2010, Verizon announced 13,000 job cuts, the third highest corporate layoff total that year.

6) Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr.

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? None. $124 million tax refund.

American Jobs Shipped overseas? Over 57,000.

Amount of Corporate Welfare? At least $58 billion.

7) Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Amount of federal income taxes Microsoft would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $19.4 billion.

8) Honeywell International CEO David Cote

Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $34 million tax refund.

9) Corning CEO Wendell Weeks

Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $4 million tax refund.

10) Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $74 million tax refund.

11). Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2009? Zero. $55 million tax refund.

12) Deere & Company CEO Samuel Allen

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2009? Zero. $1 million tax refund.

13) Marsh & McLennan Companies CEO Brian Duperreault

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $90 million refund.

14) Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs

Amount of federal income taxes Qualcomm would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.7 billion.

15) Tenneco CEO Gregg Sherill

Amount of federal income taxes Tenneco would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $269 million.

16) Express Scripts CEO George Paz

Amount of federal income taxes Express Scripts would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $20 million.

17) Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman

Amount of federal income taxes Caesars Entertainment would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $9 million.

18). R.R. Donnelly & Sons CEO Thomas Quinlan III

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $49 million tax refund.

As PoliticusUSA discloses, eighteen of the 80 CEOs who signed the call for deficit action are actually some of the biggest outsourcers and tax cheats in America. Not only did they crash the economy in 2008, they followed that incident by taking billions in taxpayer bailout dollars.

Then, they outsourced jobs and evaded taxes. It’s pretty unbelievable, then, that they are now calling for action on a deficit that they helped create over the past four years.

Thankfully, Senator Sanders is not standing for the corruption and has done a great deed by bringing the disgraceful actions of these CEOs to attention.

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Source: (All data from Top Corporate Dodgers report.)

This article (18 CEOs Called Out By Bernie Sanders For Taking Trillions In Bailouts, Evading Taxes, and Outsourcing Jobs) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com