Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, and Rubio, a former Republican presidential candidate, have both recently urged Congress to restrict companies' share repurchases.
And they're not alone. A segment of politicians argue that soaring corporate buybacks exacerbate income inequality as cash is returned to shareholders at the expense raising workers' wages and investing in longer-term development. That's been fueled in part by cash they received after the Trump administration's sweeping tax reform .
"It's clear that the SEC must review its current buyback rules to do more to protect investors," wrote Senator Chris Van Hollen , a Maryland Democrat, in a release earlier this month.
Rep. French Hill, an Arkansas Republican and member of the House Financial Services Committee, wrote in a letter toThe New York Timeslast month that limiting buybacks "disincentivizes aspiring entrepreneurs to go public and hinders individual shareholders and retirees from building equity."
But the political debate hasn't discouraged public companies from repurchasing their stock and lots of it.
Companies in the S&P 500 executed a record $223 billion of share buybacks in the fourth-quarter, bringing the 2018 total to an all-time high $806.4 billion, according to a new report from S&P Dow Jones Indices.
That was the fourth consecutive quarter of record S&P 500 company buybacks, the longest such streak in the two decades the firm has tracked the activity.
"Shareholder returns continue to set records, but watching the buyback rate could give you a stiff neck," said Howard Silverblatt, the senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
"Companies continued to spend more of their tax savings on these share repurchases as they boosted earnings through significantly reduced share counts."
Which corporations are actually executing the buybacks? Most of them. Last year, 444 companies in the S&P 500 repurchased shares, up from 424 in 2017.
Digging deeper, technology companies have dominated the buyback landscape, accounting for 34.5% of the total among S&P 500 companies in 2018. That was up from 22.9% the prior year.
On the company level, investors can't discuss buybacks without mentioning one of the practice's biggest fans in recent years: Apple . The iPhone giant spent $74.2 billion on buybacks in 2018, the most of any S&P 500 company. Apple has also executed 12 of the 20 largest quarterly buybacks of all time, according to Silverblatt's report.
Now read more markets news from Markets Insider and Business Insider: