A group of multinational corporations have been undertaking a quiet lobbying campaign in an attempt to goad Congress into approving what it known as a tax repatriation holiday. Such a holiday would allow these corporations to bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate. Usually, repatriated money is subject to the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent, and remains untaxed until it comes back to the U.S.

The corporate case for this tax break is that it will bring a flood of capital into the U.S. that will be spent on domestic investment and job creation. 2012 Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is pushing the policy by making similar claims. However, research into a previous repatriation holiday — enacted by Congress in 2004 — shows that it did not deliver the promised returns in terms of investment or job creation, instead going to line the pockets of corporate executives.

Not only that, but the 2004 tax break also wound up increasing the amount of money corporations stow offshore, as they parked even more of it there in the hopes that Congress would approve another holiday somewhere down the line:

Research by Northwestern’s Brennan indicates companies rationally concluded that if they were granted one special one-time tax break, they might very well be granted another. That gave them the incentive to attribute even more of their profits to foreign operations, like a shopper waiting for an end-of-season sale. By the end of 2006 the total “permanently” reinvested abroad had exceeded the 2004 peak. It has continued to grow since.

Of course, it makes sense that corporations would simply leave money overseas, rather than pay the statutory tax rate, if they are convinced that Congress will continue to approve misguided tax breaks over and over. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said that approving another tax holiday without closing the myriad loopholes in the corporate tax code “makes a farce out of the whole system.”

As CAP’s Seth Hanlon noted, the nonsensical U.S. corporate tax code combines the ability to stow tax-free cash overseas with a slew of loopholes; these have driven corporate tax revenue down to one of the lowest points in history. Approving another repatriation holiday would fix none of those problems and constitute just another giveaway to corporations that already aren’t paying their fair share.

In 2010, 18 percent of the country — nearly one in five households — reported not having enough money to provide food at some point during the year. Last month, food prices increased by 3.9 percent, in the largest jump since 1974. Vegetable prices increased by nearly fifty percent, driven in part by weather disasters damaging crops in place such as Australia and Russia.

These trends are occurring at the same time that unemployment has remained unacceptably high, leaving many Americans with nothing but the social safety net standing between them and going hungry. But as National Journal’s Tim Fernholz reported, the House Agriculture Committee has called for a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI):

One part of the agriculture budget that has seen increases is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) where spending has tripled over the last ten years. Given the economic downturn and high unemployment which has left many Americans with few options, an increase in nutrition assistance spending is to be expected….But much of the cost increase has come through government action as opposed to the kind of macroeconomic forces that naturally result in increased subscriptions.

The letter’s co-authors — House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-MN) — are correct that, in the face of the Great Recession, food stamp benefits were increased. But those increased benefits have (unfortunately) already been reduced to pay for a jobs bill that Congress passed last year.

And at the same time they’re pointing to food stamps as an area ripe for cuts, Lucas and Peterson say that the tens of billions in annual agriculture subsides that the U.S. provides should be off-limits for reductions. At the moment, 61 percent of the subsidies that the U.S. provides for agriculture go to just ten percent of recipients. Though some restrictions on rich farmers receiving subsidies were placed into the 2008 farm bill, they were mostly ineffective. And entrenched lawmakers on the agriculture committee help to keep it that way:

The 15 congressional districts receiving the most in payments accounted for about a quarter of all farm aid…Representatives from nine of those districts serve on the House Agriculture Committee, including the panel’s top Democrat and Republican.

At the moment, 90 percent of agriculture subsidies go toward the production of just five crops — corn, wheat, rice, soy and cotton. “Most of that 90 percent went to the large farming corporations,” said Annie Shattuck of the Institute for Food & Development Policy. “Much of those commodities were not used for food, but for animal feed and industrial applications. Cotton is not even a food.” Yet lawmakers on the Agriculture Committee feel that this wasteful spending is more important than helping Americans families weather the Great Recession.