American Jobs

AMERICAN JOBS

Mr. DORGAN. On May 5 of this year, we had a vote in the Senate. That vote was on an amendment that I had offered, together with my colleague, Senator Mikulski from Maryland. The intent of the vote was to shut down a loophole that rewards U.S. companies that move their manufacturing jobs overseas.

Yes, we have that kind of loophole. It is a perverse, insidious loophole in our Tax Code that says: Shut down your U.S. manufacturing plant, get rid of your U.S. employees and outsource those jobs, and, God bless you, while you leave this country, we will give you a tax cut.

Talk about a perverse incentive to do exactly the wrong thing, that is it.

We are now seeing the conference committee between the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee meet and negotiate over a FSC/ETI bill, sometimes also called the "jobs bill." If they finish putting this bill together in conference and do not include a provision to eliminate this perverse incentive, they will have done precious little to help protect, nurture, and strengthen American jobs.

Incidentally, when I offered this amendment on May 5 of this year, the amendment was tabled by a vote of 60 to 39. Sixty Members of the Senate voted to say they did not want to shut down a tax loophole that provides an incentive for companies to fire their American workers and move their U.S. jobs overseas. So that loophole still exists in tax law.

Now I read in the paper this morning they really do not want to pay for the cost of this FSC/ETI bill by shutting down loopholes. This is unbelievable.

We have American companies now that decide they want to do business through a post office box in the Bahamas or the Grand Caymans. Why? Do they want to be a citizen of the Grand Caymans? Not exactly. They just want to avoid paying U.S. taxes so everyone else can pay taxes that these folks do not pay.

I suggest that once companies have decided to move their corporation and run their business out of a mailbox in the Bahamas for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes, the next time they get in trouble maybe they ought to call the Bahamian Navy to protect them. I understand the Bahamian Navy has 20 people. Maybe the next time one of these companies gets in trouble with some expropriated assets or other issue they can call on the combined flexed muscle of the Bahamian Navy.

My point is simple. We have a real problem in this country with the outsourcing of jobs. In the last 4 years, we have actually lost jobs at a time when we are supposed to be creating jobs. We have an expanding population. We need new jobs. But we are losing jobs.

I will not give the same speech I have given previously about the Radio Flyer and Huffy bicycles, those quintessentially American products that are now being made in China. I will not talk about the all-American cookie, the Fig Newton, now being made in Monterey, Mexico, so that it is now Mexican food. I will not give the speech about the outsourcing of these jobs to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China. But if this country does not wake up soon and get rid of these pernicious loopholes in the tax law that say, ship your U.S. jobs overseas and we will give you a big tax cut, if we do not do that, we are not going to succeed.

Growing an economy requires us to do the right things. We cannot talk about growing the economy and then support tax loopholes and say, by the way, ship your U.S. jobs overseas. That does not work. We are outsourcing jobs every single day and no one seems to care much about it.

Incidentally, that also relates to the trade deficit, because when we outsource the jobs and ship the products from those jobs back into this country, it means we exacerbate the trade deficit, which is the largest deficit in human history.

One can make an argument as an economist-I used to teach a bit of economy in college-one can make an argument that the budget deficit is money we owe to ourselves. We cannot make that argument with respect to a trade deficit. We owe a trade deficit to other countries. It will be paid inevitably by a lower standard of living in our country in the future.

The largest trade deficit in history ought to be cause for substantial alarm in this Chamber and at the White House. Yet there is almost a conspiracy of silence all around this town about a trade deficit that, in my judgment, hurts this country very badly.

Incidentally, Lou Dobbs has written a book about this trade deficit. I encourage colleagues and others to read it. His program, more than any on television these days, is talking about the danger of this trade deficit.

At any rate, as they finalize this jobs bill in conference, which is going on as I speak, they need to come back to the amendment I offered last May 5 with my colleague, Senator Mikulski. They need to shut down this perverse incentive in tax law, which gives benefits and encouragement and financial help to companies that move their jobs overseas.