Demand the truth. The American people deserve answers.

Apple executives were called in to testify before members of Congress yesterday. They were accused of “shifting” profits abroad to avoid paying taxes.

The fact of the matter, though, as Heritage Foundation tax expert Curtis Dubay told Fox Business yesterday, is that the money hasn’t been shifted at all because it wasn’t earned in the U.S. “I can’t go down to the Apple store here in Washington, buy an iPad, and have Apple then ‘shift’ that income abroad,” he said.

The U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest rate in the world. As long as it remains so exorbitant, successful businesses like Apple are going to keep their foreign income abroad.

Heritage’s Amy Payne has more:

The reason the Senate feigned indignation over an issue that had nothing to do with the U.S. is that some Members want Apple to pay more U.S. tax on all that foreign cash. They want Apple to bring all of that profit back into the U.S. and pay the U.S. corporate tax rate—the world’s highest—on it. But as long as we keep the U.S. rate the highest in the world, Apple and other multinational businesses are going to keep their foreign income abroad.

Apple has not done anything illegal by minimizing its tax liability. Because of America’s extremely high corporate tax rate, many companies don’t return to the U.S. what money they earn abroad. While other countries have been making efforts to cut their corporate tax rates, the U.S. has been making it more and more difficult for U.S. businesses.

Do you think Apple should pay more in taxes? Or should we fix the tax code to stop punishing successful firms?

He didn't know? Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama says he didn’t know about the multiple scandals involving his administration, including the IRS harassment of conservative groups. But as the chief executive, shouldn’t President Obama be held responsible for these scandals?

If this were the business world, the answer would be “yes,” The Heritage Foundation’s Daniel Dew explains:

It is interesting to note, however — by way of analogy only — that under the DOJ’s standard of “responsibility,” if President Obama were the head of a corporation, he would be responsible and could be prosecuted.

According to the Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine, Dew explains, the only requirement to determine criminal liability is, “some relationship between the executive’s supervisory responsibilities and the underlying misconduct.” President Obama meets these two criteria.

President Obama’s defenders argue that the government is too large and complex for the president to know what’s going on, so he cannot possibly be held responsible. If that’s true, Dew suggests that private executives should be granted the same leniency:

If the President is not responsible for the wrongdoings of executive branch employees because the federal government is “too vast” for him to know everything that goes on in the various agencies, business owners and officers should be afforded the same excuse in criminal prosecutions.

Ultimately, this is an argument for limited government. The smaller the government, the easier to account for all the goings-on in each different branch and department.

 Do you think our government should be more limited?

“On May 19, the United States hit its debt ceiling after adding $300 billion in more debt since lawmakers suspended the ceiling in February,” Heritage’s Romina Boccia reports.

That’s $300 billion in new debt in less than four months.

Hitting the limit, she says, is part of an ongoing pattern:

1. Spend;
2. Spend some more;
3. Run up against the debt ceiling;
4. Resort to “extraordinary measures” to ward off a possible default for a while; and finally,
5. Settle for inadequate measures that fail to curb soaring debt in the future.

A better alternative is a budget that fully funds national defense, focuses on the federal government’s core priorities, and reforms entitlement programs to ensure they are financially healthy and can help the neediest.

Do you think Congress will be able to rein in spending and debt?

The IRS scandals are especially troubling since that’s the agency that’s in charge of administering much of Obamacare. “The scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books,” Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint argues.

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Congress is currently debating the so-called “farm bill,” which Heritage Foundation experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz call “a multi-billion-dollar tangle of agriculture subsidies, welfare payments, and environmental patronage.”

In fact, this legislation is really a food-stamp bill with farm programs tacked on. As Bakst and Rachel Sheffield explain, this approach allows urban and rural lawmakers to join forces to spend taxpayer money.

On top of that, the proposal is chock full of wasteful subsidies to green energy projects, as Heritage’s Nick Loris points out. These subsidies are harmful economically and often counterproductive environmentally.

Bakst and Katz recommend a new approach. Their conservative alternative

would end the perverse subsidies to profitable agricultural enterprises paid by middle-class taxpayers. It would eliminate the tariffs and quotas and price “supports” that artificially inflate food prices—and the family grocery bill. And a new approach to agriculture policy would liberate farmers whose decisions are routinely dictated by government. The benefits of reform are as abundant as America’s food supply.

Should lawmakers reconsider this irresponsible legislation?

Six-point-three trillion dollars is a staggering number, but it was calculated using very reasonable assumptions. No one knows how many illegal immigrants are in this country, but the lowest estimate (barely above the number counted by the census) is 11.5 million — the number Rector used. In other words, $6.3 trillion is the floor, not the ceiling, for amnesty’s cost.

[Heritage expert Robert] Rector’s unassailable method is the only holistic approach available to policymakers, and it would be irresponsible to ignore it in favor of approaches that consider only a few variables.

King cited Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman: “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Do you think American taxpayers can afford to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants?

It’s no secret American leadership in the world is growing weaker. Our decreasing influence can be traced to the Obama Doctrine.

With his goal to make the United States “an equal partner” rather than an “exceptional” nation, President Obama has sought to remake American foreign policy. For years, The Heritage Foundation has explored and tracked the Obama Doctrine. Heritage’s Helle Dale explains the four main tenets identified by authors Kim Holmes and James Carafano. They are:

1. Ratification of more treaties and reliance on international organizations more often to deal with global crises and security concerns like nuclear weapons, often before turning to our traditional friends and allies;
2. Emphasis on diplomacy and “soft power” instruments such as summits and foreign aid to promote its aims and downplay military might;
3. Adoption of a more humble attitude in state-to-state relations; and
4. Playing a more restrained role on the international stage.

Becoming weaker in the world’s eye is not advantageous for the U.S..  Dale explains:

Soft power has not advanced the cause of political reform or peace in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings. And regimes like those of Syria, North Korea, and Iran display little fear of consequences from a U.S. in global retreat.

While the Obama Doctrine has made America weaker abroad, he has pushed for a stronger and more intrusive government at home. Recent scandals aside (IRS, AP spying, Benghazi), Obamacare is a prime example of a power-grab. As Heritage president  Jim DeMint wrote in yesterday’s Morning Bell, Obamacare is a means by which President Obama can jockey for more power through the IRS: “ Obamacare grants it (IRS) massive new authority.”

Do you think President Obama needs to reevaluate his policy priorities?

Heritage Foundation experts accounted for three of the nine articles in the Journal of International Security Affairs‘ recent symposium (not yet online) on the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative:

1. Baker Spring reviews the history of missile defense and explains that lawmakers opposed to such defenses have come to see its benefits
2. Rebecca Heinrichs discusses the varying sorts of threats for which missile defenses are appropriate
3. Michaela Dodge explains the logic of space-based missile defenses

Do you think missile defense can help keep America safe?

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint was named to Washington Life’s “Power List,” an annual ranking of the power-players in the nation’s political scene. Read the full list here.