The Center for Corporate Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization working to curb corporate abuses and make corporations publicly accountable.

    What Congress Should Do:

Our Response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC: A major attack on Democracy.

What should be done with Fannie and Freddie? The Obama administration will release a draft proposal soon. The options were debated at a recent roundtable filmed by C-SPAN.

Some are saying that President Obama sold out to Wall Street. True or not, his response to the financial collapse has been too cautious. The president's recent proposal to make big bailed-out banks pay taxpayers back is a good step forward, but he should also follow his own suggestion to tax speculative financial transactions by supporting the "Make Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2010," H.R. 4191, which would tax speculative transactions, including derivatives trades (95% of which are held by the 5 biggest banks). To learn more go here and here. For other steps that Congress should take, go here.

Offshore Tax Havens suck about $100 billion in taxes out of the U.S. each year. Read our response to Obama's proposed overseas corporate tax reforms and go here to learn more.

Instead of cap and trade, let's make the polluters pay. Economist William Nordhaus calls a carbon tax "the most efficient strategy for slowing or preventing climate change.

CCP's Reaction to Obama Administration's Executive Pay Policy (2009)
Learn about CEO Pay Issues and read our Suggestions for How to Crack Down on CEO Greed.

Stop the War Profiteers:
a) The Blackwater/Xe saga illustrates a key problem brought about by excessive privatization: Private military corporations (PMCs) cannot be effectively regulated. Instead, the best approach has been suggested by Rep. Janschakowsky (D-IL), who is reintroducing The Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which would phase out the use of mercenary firms for inherently-governmental operations.
b) The Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act (S. 606) was introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) in 2007. This bill would bar law-breaking companies from new contracts, help whistleblowers and improve accountability and oversight. See [Bill Summary; our response and analysis]
c) "The Clean Contracting Act" (H.R. 6909) was introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in the House. [Summary HR 6909] These bills apply lessons learned from Iraq and Katrina contracting to all federal contracts. For more information about war profiteering go here.

    Building A Long-Term Challenge to Corporate Power:

Taming the Giant Corporation was the theme of a 2007 Conference that we helped organize. If you missed the conference, you can watch most of the presentations online.

Also, be sure to read "Revisiting Corporate Charters", our paper on how corporate charters could be used as an instrument of public policy. The paper was published by Corporation2020 for their 2007 conference in Boston. The paper is a sequel to an earlier paper called "Corporations and the Public Purpose."

In 2007, the Center for Corporate Policy helped develop the Strategic Corporate Initiative -- a long-term approach to bringing corporations back under public control. To learn more about the SCI report, see Corporate Ethics International's description of the project.

One of the policies identified in the SCI report as key was Public Funding of Elections, which would make it easier to challenge corporate-funded candidates in elections. Public funding has been successful in a growing number of states and cities. Federal candidates should co-sponsor or pledge their support for the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 1285) and (H.R. 7022) -- which were both reintroduced in the current session of Congress with bi-partisan support. To learn more, see You Street and Public Campaign.

Additional CCP Topics, Projects and Investigations:

CCP's List of Recommended Reading
Size Matters: The Failure to Address Concentrated Economic Power
Corporate Bribery Page
Congressional Ethics Reform
Wal-Mart Information Page.
Supreme Court nominations.
A Loaded Chamber: Big Business Attacks Sarbanes-Oxley and Other Post-Enron Reforms
2006 Budget Proposal.
The 2004 elections
State and Local Policies.