The Republican Party has clearly become beholden to the pharmaceutical industry in recent years. In 2003, the GOP passed a trillion dollar giveaway to PhRMA in the form of the poorly-written Medicare Presicription Drug plan. Now, as The New York Times' Alex Berenson reports, it looks like the GOP has enabled these drug companies, who already rake in excorbitant profits, to forgo paying their fair share in taxes.

A new tax break for corporations is allowing the biggest American drug makers to return as much as $75 billion in profits from international havens to the United States while paying a fraction of the normal tax rate.

The break is part of the American Jobs Creation Act, signed into law by President Bush in October, which allows companies a one-year window to return foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25 percent tax rate, compared with the standard 35 percent rate.

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Already, four of the six drug makers have collectively announced plans to return $56 billion in profits to the United States. Two others say they are still considering but could repatriate an additional $18 billion. Had the six companies faced standard federal taxes on those profits, they would have paid $26 billion to the United States. Instead, they will pay less than $4 billion. Chris Senyek, an accounting analyst at Bear Stearns, said drug companies would probably make up about half of all the money repatriated by publicly traded companies.

With so much graft going to the the pharmaceutical industry in the form of the so-called "American Jobs Creation Act," it would be safe to assume that these drug companies would be offering more jobs in America, right? Wrong.

Although the act is intended to create jobs, Pfizer said last month that it would cut its annual costs by $4 billion over the next three years. Pfizer, which will repatriate at least $28 billion under the act, did not say how many jobs it planned to eliminate, but analysts expect the company to shrink its work force by thousands of people. Mr. Senyek said the law would create an insignificant number of jobs because companies can easily work around provisions in the law meant to stop them from using the money for dividends to shareholders rather than new hiring.

Is it right for corporations making billions of dollars to pay only 5.25% in taxes when even the poorest Americans pay nearly twice that in federal income taxes (to say nothing of state and local taxes)? Is it right for the Republican Party to reward their big donors with massive pork-barrel spending and allow them to pay virtually nothing in taxes? ...? ...?