Opposition to foreign taxes on American investment and hard work has been coded into our national DNA for almost 240 years. Yet almost two and a half centuries after resolving that we would not stand idle while others decide how to tax us, Americans once again must take decisive action to guarantee we can enjoy the dividends of our ingenuity.

Unlike the pre-Revolutionary era, our own policies are partly responsible for the current environment. U.S. companies that do business globally are holding an estimated $2 trillion in capital abroad, and domestic intellectual property investments are at risk because our existing corporate tax structure is outdated and punitive. We currently have the highest corporate income tax rate in the idustrialized world. Last week, a study by the Tax Foundation ranked the United States 34th out of 36 industrialized countries in the competitiveness of our tax code.