Posted on 07/26/2012 8:05:22 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
In a setback to US President Barack Obama’s push to curb outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries like India and China, Republican lawmakers have blocked a Bill in the Senate that sought to end tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas but cut taxes for those bringing the jobs back home.
Called “Bring Jobs Home Act”, the measure was first outlined by Obama in his State of the Union address in January. In recent weeks, Obama had whipped up outsourcing into a major campaign issue, questioning Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s record on this score as former CEO of Bain Capital and then as Governor of Massachusetts.
The Bill, backed by the White House, could not be taken up as it fell short of the 60 votes needed to clear procedural hurdle to start debate. Four Republican Senators broke ranks to support the measure, yet it could muster only 56-42 votes.
The White House voiced its disappointment at the development, but used it to score political points. “Rather than encouraging companies to bring jobs back to our shores, the Republicans chose to play politics and block measures that will create jobs and strengthen the middle class. We will continue to push Congress to act on proposals like this and the other remaining portions of the President’s American Jobs Act that independent economists say would create a million new American Jobs,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypioneer.com ...
it would be nice if both parties could do what’s best for the american people
Tax policy should not be politicized.
Republicans should be supporting the reduction of corporate tax rates to an internationally competitive 15% and the end of all credits and special exemptions.
What else is in the bill? The devil is always in the details.
Sounds good on paper. They have to do what their lobbyists want, not what the American people want.
Not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties.
“Not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties.”
If your in the middle, not rich not poor, you have very little influence except during an election year for your vote and then you are forgotten.
Big money talks in DC. That is why there will be no meaningful tax reform.
The GOP would have been happy to see tax breaks for insourcing. But this looks like a fig leaf for overall tax increases.
“What else is in the bill? The devil is always in the details.”
My thoughts exactly!!!
“Daily Pioneer”?
As in Young Pioneers?
the Bring Jobs Home Act would have created an “insourcing expense credit” equal to one-fifth of expenses related to shutting down a business overseas and re-establishing it in the United States. If enacted, this measure would have joined the pantheon of awful, politically motivated tax credits, like the ethanol tax credit — now defunct, blessedly — that was brought to us by the corn states.
The credit would have created bizarre corporate incentives. Imagine a company that’s deciding between establishing a factory costing $1 million in Honduras and establishing a $10 million factory in Massachusetts. The greater productivity here might well offset the higher costs.
But under the Bring Jobs Home Act, a smart company would open first in Honduras, then shut down and then relocate to the Bay State. The firm would get $2 million in tax credits, which would more than offset the cost of the Honduran operation. The tax code would encourage businesses to start a foreign operation first — by subsidizing the cost of later switching to the United States.
The act would provide a credit even for fully automated factories. But why should we provide tax credits for units that employ nobody?
Members of the AFL-CIO push Bring Jobs Home Act
“If our computer breaks and we call Dell, we talk to somebody from overseas,” said Carol Carvalho, executive director of the Southeastern Area Labor Federation of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. “As part of the AFL-CIO effort, we have been focusing on the need to create jobs and promoting legislative action that keeps jobs here in this country.”
(Unions don’t think it is their fault they are ruining & running off companies)
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/07/04/news/doc4ff4f65f2b681296847315.txt
My guess it wasn't a "clean" bill.
Okay, that makes sense. Once again Obama is the turd in the punch bowel, trying to make people who won’t take a drink, look silly.
My guess it wasn't a "clean" bill.
Probably wasn’t a clean bill. Very few are, but the dems will point to the republicans as not wanting to create jobs and of course the MSM will portray it that way. But I haven’t heard anything on the news about it yet, so maybe it will stay under the radar.
I just don’t think the GOP understands that often perception is reality, especially to stupid people.
Part of the cleanness problem might be the treatment of US based multinationals that do out-manufacturing in the same countries where they sell because the customer country requires it. If such companies will see new penalties for doing that, this is unreasonable.
“Rather than encouraging companies to bring jobs back to our shores, the Republicans chose to play politics and block measures that will create jobs and strengthen the middle class. We will continue to push Congress to act on proposals like this and the other remaining portions of the President’s American Jobs Act that independent economists say would create a million new American Jobs,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said."
GOP should back this approach. Fix the bill if necessary. Just about everything you buy is made elsewhere. Make things here. Restore America. Jobs is the #1 issue. Vote out job exporters of both parties.
You’re spot on with your example scenario. I worked for a company that was happy to “wrap a $20 bill” around each unit shipped (ie losing $20 each, because the tax breaks provided by the SE Asian nation for having built the manufacturing plant there exceed the annualized loss on products by a substantial amount.
That is one of the dirtiest secrets about Big Businesses today. THEY NO LONGER EXIST TO DESIGN, MANUFACTURE, DISTRIBUTE AND SUPPORT QUALITY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. They exist SOLELY to manipulate their P&L sheet, in any manner they can, in order to line the pockets of the top management gang. PERIOD, END OF STORY.
“Can someone explain to me how anyone could back tax breaks for corporations moving jobs overseas?”
I simply don’t understand any jusification for this.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s3364/text
Sponsors
•Debbie Ann Stabenow (MI - D)
Co-sponsors
•Richard Blumenthal (CT - D)
•Sherrod C. Brown (OH - D)
•Benjamin L. ‘Ben’ Cardin (MD - D)
•Robert P. ‘Bob’ Casey Jr. (PA - D)
•Christopher A. ‘Chris’ Coons (DE - D)
•Richard J. ‘Dick’ Durbin (IL - D)
•Al Franken (MN - D)
•Kirsten E. Gillibrand (NY - D)
•Amy Klobuchar (MN - D)
•Claire McCaskill (MO - D)
•Jeffery A. ‘Jeff’ Merkley (OR - D)
•Barbara A. Mikulski (MD - D)
•John D. ‘Jay’ Rockefeller IV (WV - D)
•Charles E. ‘Chuck’ Schumer (NY - D)
•Sheldon Whitehouse (RI - D)
******
Jul 19 2012
Hatch: Democrats’ Latest Tax Proposal a Joke
In Speech, Utah Senator Says, “We should be pursuing laws that will help, not harm, businesses and middle class taxpayers. And, the bill we are discussing on the floor today is not going to help.”
The Bring Jobs Home Act would deny the deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses to the extent that such expenses were incurred for outsourcing. That is, to the extent an employer incurred costs in relocating a business unit from the United States to outside the United States, the employer would be disallowed a deduction for any of the business expenses associated with such outsourcing.
The Bring Jobs Home Act would also create a new tax credit for insourcing. That is, if a company relocated a business unit from outside the United States to inside the United States, the business would be allowed a tax credit equal to 20 percent of the costs associated with such insourcing.
On the surface, this proposal may sound reasonable. As sound bites go, the President’s reelection campaign and the Senate Democratic leadership have apparently decided that they can make some political hay with this proposal. But as substantive tax policy goes, this proposal is a joke.
First of all, the amount of money involved is trifling. According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, this bill’s deduction disallowance provision will only raise about $14 million per year. That’s 14 million, not billion.
Let’s put that in perspective. This bill is supposedly a critical tax incentive to create jobs here in the United States. Yet according to the JCT, it will only raise about $14 million per year. Meanwhile, President Obama’s campaign has now spent $24 million on ads attacking outsourcing.
The American people want us to address our fiscal situation and to create the conditions for robust economic and job growth. And how are the President and Senate Democrats spending their time?
Simply put, this bill is misleading. Its supporters would have you believe that under current law there is some special deduction that exists for moving jobs outside of the United States. That is simply false.
Disallowing the business expense deduction means that income will now be measured less accurately. Gross receipts minus business expenses equals income. That’s what both accountants and economists tell us.
But even though economists, accountants, and businesses all measure income one way, Washington will now measure it another way.
Not only is this bad for business, but by disallowing deductions for certain business expenses, this proposal would measure income less accurately. And when the government’s main source of revenue is the income tax, it is rather important to measure income accurately!
Ultimately, we know that this bill is devoid of serious content because it is the product of political, not economic, necessity. This bill is a sound bite — not sound tax policy. There really aren’t a lot of dots to connect here.
http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ID=51600c05-2653-4dc5-918b-e23be0a7adf1
the genesis of this bill’s prioritization can be traced in a straight line from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the President’s reelection headquarters in Chicago. This bill is called the Bring Jobs Home Act, but its Democratic proponents have not presented any evidence of the number of jobs, if any, that will return to America if the proposal becomes law. During comments in support of the bill the sponsor referred to a chart that said, and I quote, [i]n the last decade, 2.4 million jobs were shipped overseas.
But the sponsor tellingly did not say that the bill will bring 2.4 million jobs back to America. The proponents of this bill have not even told us that jobs will return to America if this bill becomes law, much less how many. The answer is probably none, but that is exactly the sort of question we would have explored had this bill been produced by the Senate Finance Committee rather than by some campaign consultant in Chicago.
It is disappointing that even though the sponsor of this bill is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, the bill’s sponsor chose to bypass that Committee. This bill has come straight to the Senate floor without being vetted by the Committee. Her colleagues on the Committee would likely have some valuable feedback for her. Both staffs on the Committee would likely have valuable expertise that they could bring to bear on this proposal. That is why I anticipate moving to commit this bill to the Finance Committee.
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