Monday, March 14, 2016

AT LEAST $15 BILLION TO $25 BILLION SAVINGS

“[President Barak] Obama has continued to invoke carried-interest reform as a way, to raise
revenue. [
David] Rubenstein, who no longer has to contend with any real attempts to close the
l
oophole, has little to gain by insisting that it be retained. Instead, he characterizes reform efforts
as a distraction. He to
ld [PBS journalist] Charlie Rose in 2012, Our bigger problem isn't carried
interest.
Our bigger problem is the one-trillion-dollar annual deficit and the sixteen trillion dollars of
debt we
have.At the Credit Suisse forum in 2013, Rubenstein said of the potential savings from
closing the loophole, "It's a very modest amount of money.’
Victor Fleischer [the loophole’s opponent] disagrees. He believes that the revenue gained by loophole closure would be many times as much as official projections, which have ranged from fifteen billion dollars over ten years to twenty-five billion dollars.”


Alec MacGillis, “The Billionaires’ Loophole,” New Yorker, March 14, 2016, pp: 64-73.