U.S. Chamber CEO Calls Obama's Plan to Tax Bank Transactions ‘Bad Idea’

(CNSNews.com) – Tom Donohue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Obama administration’s plan to tax bank transactions to recoup some of the $364 billion in TARP funds used to bail out the U.S. financial sector is misguided.

“It’s a bad idea,” Donohue told CNSNews.com at a news conference following his State of American Business address at the Chamber’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

“The interesting thing about the suggestion of some form of tax or another on bank transactions, the immediate thing they say is, ‘don’t pass it on to consumers,’” Donohue said. “If you know anything at all about how business works – every kind of business – it would be helpful.

“If you don’t pass it on to the consumer, then you’re going to have smaller profits,” Donohue said. “If you have smaller profits, then your stock is going to go down. If your stock goes down, then everybody that holds your stock may need to sell it, or they are going to have less money in their 401K or in their pension plan or in their investment deals.