The talk among progressives in Congress right now is how to punish any business that moves overseas to avoid paying corporate taxes in America. Perhaps they should instead ask why corporations and businesses would want to move in the first place. The reason is the high corporate taxes levied in this country.

The title of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal says it all: “We’re Number 32!” They were explaining the findings of the Tax Foundation. The foundation’s study looked at more than 40 tax policy variables and used them to rank the 34 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation. The United States ranked 32 out of the 34 countries. The United States did better than France, but that is a country currently run by an avowed socialist.

The index was based upon two important principles: competitiveness and neutrality. A competitive tax code in a country would be one that limits the taxation of businesses and investment. Neutrality would mean that the tax code would raise the most revenue with the fewest economic distortions. A country that gives various tax breaks to favored companies would not be neutral. Crony capitalism is not neutral.

The Tax Foundation ranking reminds us the U.S. tax burden on corporations and businesses is close to the worst in the industrialized world. The federal corporate tax burden is already the highest in the developed world. And the tax code also requires that money earned overseas be taxed as if it were earned in this country. Most corporations have millions overseas they could repatriate if that tax burden were lifted.

Over the next few weeks we will hear members of Congress complain about corporations and businesses that moved their headquarters overseas. They will propose building an economic wall to prevent others from escaping. Instead, they should reform the U.S. tax code. It would encourage companies to stay and might even encourage some of those companies that left to move back to America.