Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called for a lowering of the corporate tax rate on CNBC's Street Signs Tuesday, saying the current system was faulty.
"I think we have to reform the tax code," he said. "We have a corporate tax that doesn't work. It should be lower ... The reason it should be lower, and I realize many progressives are clutching their chest as they say this, but we really do have to repatriate some of the many billions of dollars that are being held overseas by American corporations. So we need to lower it, but we need make the corporations pay for that simply by taking out all the exemptions, which is bad for business anyway."
Host Brian Sullivan said he was pleasantly surprised to hear such language from Dean, adding the former Democratic presidential candidate sounded like a Republican. Dean replied though he was pessimistic about corporate tax reform, he would still support lowering rates and repeated his support for repatriation of money held overseas by corporations to be invested in the United States.
"What we need is transparency, and in order to get transparency, I'm not opposed to lowering corporate taxes," Dean said. "I want to make American business more competitive, and I mostly want those dollars that are held overseas repatriated to invest in the United States, but to do this fairly is going to be really, really tough because the Congressional membership isn't going to like it."