Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. 4213, Tax Extenders Act of 2009

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Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

So here's one of the issues before the House today. Say you have an American company that owners live here and they decide that they can make more money by sending their jobs to Asia or south of the border, out of the country, and they do. And they bring the money home and enjoy it here, but the jobs go overseas. And they figure out a way to game the tax laws so they don't pay taxes for that business to the United States Treasury. So the profits come home, the jobs go overseas, and the tax revenue doesn't flow into the Treasury. This bill closes that loophole. It says, if you outsource our jobs from this country, you don't get off the hook when it comes to the IRS.

Now, what does it use the money for? Well, if an American business goes into a bank today and the bank says, you know, we would make this loan to you to expand your business but we just need a little more collateral, a little more guarantee, this bill says the Small Business Administration can step in and make that loan happen and create those jobs. Or a woman running a software company or a biosciences company says, I've got a real opportunity here to hire more scientists and researchers, but I just can't quite find the capital.

This bill says she can hire five scientists for the price of four because of the research and development tax credit, or the mayor and council of a town is saying we could fix our antiquated clean water system. We could build a new water treatment system and have cleaner water and more jobs for people in our town, but the interest rates are just a little bit too high for us. If we could borrow the money just a little bit less expensively, we could create more jobs.

This bill says that they can do that. This bill creates jobs, and it pays for the creation of those jobs by saying that those who outsource our jobs can't get off the hook and have to pay their fair share of taxes. Now I know this discomforts some on the minority side. I know it goes against their philosophy that whatever corporate America does, it is okay. We think if you outsource your job you shouldn't get off the hook for your tax obligations.

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Mr. ANDREWS. I know that it was a longstanding tradition under the prior administration and the erstwhile majority to let people outsource American jobs and not pay their fair share of taxes. Those days are ending, and the days of jobs hemorrhaging from this economy are ending because we are reinvesting in small businesses, local governments, and entrepreneurs around this country to put our people back to work.

That's the legislation before the House today. I would urge a ``yes'' vote.

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Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I would say to my friend, the gentlewoman from North Carolina, through the Chair, that maybe, instead of a dictionary, we should have a math book or a history book brought out, because there is some historical context, recent historical context, to this discussion.

Mr. Speaker, we were told in January of 2009, with respect to the Recovery Act that was on the House floor, that it is clear that it doesn't create the jobs or preserve the jobs that need to happen. That was said by our friend, the minority leader of the Republicans, Mr. Boehner, that it is clear that the recovery bill doesn't create the jobs or preserve the jobs that need to happen.

Now, in the 3 months that were in the context of that remark, for example, in March of 2009, the economy lost 753,000 jobs. In April of 2009, it lost 528,000 jobs. We brought to this floor a bill that put construction workers back to work by building transportation projects. If they bought homes, we gave people tax credits for their downpayments. We sent more people to colleges and to universities on Pell Grants. We cut taxes for small businesses and families across the country.

Then what happened? Well, in March of this year, the economy added 230,000 jobs. In April of this year, the economy added another 290,000 jobs.

So the other side said in good faith, in January of 2009, these things would not work. They were wrong. They haven't worked as quickly as we want. They haven't worked as much as we want, but the tired philosophy that says that inaction and inattention will fix the problem has failed. A philosophy that says that giving American entrepreneurs, American taxpayers, American construction workers the chance to succeed will and does.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, in fact, the gentleman is correct. There were jobs that were added. They were government jobs. They were government jobs because of the census, and that is why we saw an uptick.

Let's go back to Texas. I know there has been a lot said about Texas. In Texas, unemployment jumped from 6.8 percent in April 2009 to 8.1 percent in April 2010. That's an additional 188,600 people unemployed.

I appreciate you all in trying to take credit for this great, robust economic boom that's going on in this country. The fact of the matter is it's not working that way.

Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record a letter dated May 24, 2010, from IBM. I'm going to read just the last paragraph because it shows, really, the misnomer of my Democrat friend's argument about how great this bill is, the jobs bill.

It reads, ``Despite the 1-year renewal of the R&D tax credit, which we and other technology firms have long supported, the late insertion of large, new, permanent tax increases, together with hundreds of billions in new deficit spending that has not been offset, leads IBM to strongly oppose this legislation.''

Hundreds of billions of dollars in new deficit spending.

This reminds me a lot of the firefighter who goes out and sets a fire and then shows up to put it out, trying to get credit when, in fact, that firefighter is an arsonist. IBM gets it. IBM gets it and they understand: hundreds of billions of dollars of new deficit spending that has not been offset.

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