Perriello Votes to Protect American Manufacturing Jobs and Support Small Business

Press Release

Rep. Tom Perriello again stood up for American workers today by voting for H.R. 5982, a bill that would have created and protected American construction and manufacturing jobs by closing the tax loopholes that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. The bill also helped small businesses by repealing certain expenditure reporting requirements that would have been overly burdensome. This was a fully paid-for bill to benefit the middle and working class, but the bill failed to pass the House after Republicans chose to stand with corporations that outsource jobs.

"I thought I'd seen the worst case of partisanship beating common sense, but this may take the cake. Here we had a chance to remove a major regulatory burden on small business and close a horrible tax loophole that sends American jobs to foreign soil. The Republicans said they supported both parts, but just didn't want to let us get something real done for the American people. It's outrageous that Republicans decided to score political points at the expense of American workers and small businesses," said Rep. Perriello.

H.R. 5982 would have finally closed the tax loopholes that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. The manufacturing sector has lost over 2 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, and from 2001-2008 Central and Southern Virginia lost nearly 6,000 manufacturing jobs to China. Closing these job-killing loopholes has been a top priority of Rep. Perriello and he has repeatedly voted for and cosponsored legislation to eliminate them.

Closing of these loopholes would have generated $11.6 billion in revenue to help pay for the repeal of 1099 small business reporting requirements that are set to go into effect in 2012. Repeal of this requirement was strongly supported by the National Federation of Independent Business, a nationwide organization representing small businesses. Earlier this month, Rep. Perriello wrote the Commissioner of the IRS to express his concern over the 1099 requirements that would have been repealed by this bill.

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