quote:GOP Blocks Bill to Close Offshore Loophole
By Michael McAuliff
Who’s against closing tax loopholes that help companies ship jobs overseas?
All of the GOP and a few conservative Democrats, it turns out.
The Senate failed to break a filibuster of an election year bill this morning that would have granted tax breaks to companies for bringing overseas jobs back to the U.S. and prohibited tax breaks for going the other way.
Half the idea was New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s. He wanted a $1 billion program to grant companies a two-year payroll tax holiday for every job they shipped back home.
To pay for at least part of that, senators wanted to bar companies from taking a tax deduction on the cost of sending jobs from America to Mexico, China and other nations, as they do now.
But the Senate fell seven votes shy of the 60 needed to end a filibuster, voting 53 to 45 to start debate, and leaving the measure dead.
Democrats were not surprised, and they will keep it alive on the campaign trail.
Republicans argue that raising any taxes is bad right now, and suggest that shipping jobs overseas creates jobs back home, too, because companies are developing new markets on foreign soil, not just cheap labor.
“When these additional markets are opened overseas, that creates jobs right here in the United States,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued.
Schumer’s office, however, does not see much evidence of those jobs being created at home.
New York City had 100,000 manufacturing jobs in 2007, according to state Department of Labor figures provided by Schumer’s office. Today, it has 79,200 manufacturing jobs. The state had 552,200 industrial jobs in 2007. Today, it has 466,800, having lost 85,400.
Would one of you Reagan disciples please explain to me how moving jobs overseas creates jobs here? The GOP doesn't actually realize at this point that we need to create jobs in this country?
So the GOP won't help bring jobs back to this country but will block unemployment benefits to the out-of-work and so-called lazy. Hmmmm.