The Market Center Blog

Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation

For Immediate Release
Monday, August 2, 2010
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org

New CF&P Video Exposes OECD's
Big-Government Bias -- Financed with
American Tax Dollars

(Washington, D.C., Monday, August 2, 2010) In a new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute explains that the $100 million spent each year to subsidize the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a terrible deal for American taxpayers.  Entitled "The Paris-Based OECD: Pushing Obama's Big-Government Agenda With Your Tax Dollars," this new CF&P mini-documentary explains how the European-dominated bureaucracy relentlessly pushes for a bigger burden of government - and routinely urges more statism in America.

The OECD's anti-market agenda is particularly galling since, as the video notes, the United States is the biggest contributor to the OECD budget.

Links to the video: YouTube | Yahoo | Capitol Hub

"It is unfortunate that American taxpayers are financing an international bureaucracy that wants more statism, and it is outrageous that the OECD is specifically urging a bigger burden of government in the United States," said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan.  "We need to withdraw support from the OECD," he concluded.

"With Europe's welfare states on the brink of collapse, it is especially foolish for American taxpayers to subsidize an international bureaucracy that wants to make America more like Greece," said the video's narrator, Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, "And it is hypocritical for OECD bureaucrats to push for higher taxes in America when they receive tax-free salaries that are partly financed by over-taxed Americans."
 

Executive Summary

American taxpayers finance nearly one-fourth of the budget for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international bureaucracy that routinely advocates for more government - including more taxes and spending in the United States. In just the past couple of years, the OECD has used American tax dollars to advocate Obamacare-type health policies, push for failed Keynesian stimulus spending, promote Al Gore-style carbon taxes, and urge the enactment a value-added tax. To reduce wasteful spending and protect America's free market system, American subsidies for this Paris-based bureaucracy should be eliminated.

The content for this video was largely adapted from a January 2006 CF&P Foundation Prosperitas called, "The Paris-Based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Pushing Anti-U.S. Policies with American Tax Dollars."
http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/Papers/oecd-funding/oecd-funding.shtml

CF&P Foundation has also released more than three-dozen mini-documentaries since 2007. These videos include Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama's So-Called Stimulus, Obama's Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama's Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished, The Rahn Curve and the Growth-Maximizing Level of Government, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and a another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/videos.shtml

Web Links:

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVr8R41nZJU

Yahoo
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/7993793/21188516

Capitol Hub
http://capitolhub.com/video/9260/paris-based-oecd-pushing-obamas-big -government-agenda-your-tax-dollars

For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org

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