Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from North Dakota. He is retiring. We are going to miss him. He has been a powerful voice in the Senate and no more powerful on any issue than on this one, talking about American jobs and how we are giving them away, literally giving them away.

Time and time again Senator BYRON DORGAN has come to the floor to explain that our Tax Code rewards American companies that want to ship production overseas. Is that upside down? As Senator Dorgan has said on the floor, and I completely agree with him, we should reward American companies that keep good-paying jobs in America. That is what our Tax Code should reward. If they will pay a living wage and good benefits to a worker, and stay in the United States of America, we ought to give them every tax break we can give them--help them in every way we can. Instead, it is upside down. We create incentives for them to move jobs overseas.

We are a few weeks away from an election. I wish this election would be a simple referendum on the debate we are having on the floor of the Senate right now. The Senate Republican leader has come to the floor and said we should not be talking about this issue. He wants to talk about something else. Others, representing the largest corporations and businesses in America, say that the position being taken by the Democrats to stop the tax breaks for American companies that ship jobs overseas should be defeated. I wish to take that question to the American voters. You pick the State, you pick the city, you pick the neighborhood. I want to be there. I will take our position and I invite the Republican Senators and the Chamber of Commerce and whatever other groups happen to believe the other point of view for an active debate. Who in the world believes we should be rewarding corporations in our country for shipping jobs overseas?

We know what we are going through here. This recession has cost us millions of American jobs. Under President William Jefferson Clinton, we created 22 million new jobs in America. We had the growth of small business at a pace we had never seen. We had minority ownership, woman ownership of business at a pace we had never seen. We saw the growth of new home construction and new home ownership at a record pace. During the course of that 8-year period of time, we generated a surplus in the Federal Treasury--a surplus. We had not done that for a decade or more.

So came the time when President Clinton was leaving office, handing it over to President George W. Bush. This is what he gave him: a growing economy creating jobs, home ownership and business ownership. He said to President George W. Bush: Here is the state of our economy. We are reducing our national debt because we are generating a surplus, and the entire national debt of America, given from President Clinton to President Bush, was $5 trillion.

President Clinton said to President Bush: In addition to a strong economy that is growing, I also want to tell you I am leaving you a surplus in the Treasury--$120 billion in the next year, more than you need for the expenses of our government. President Clinton said: We have been taking the surplus, incidentally, putting it back into the Social Security trust fund, and that fund will now guarantee every payment with a cost-of-living adjustment through the year 2032. Not a bad gift from President Clinton to President Bush. That was when President George W. Bush took office.

What was the state of America 8 years later, when President Bush left office, when he said to President Obama: Now it is your turn. It was a much different picture. The national debt in America was no longer $5 trillion. Eight years later, after President Bush, it was $12 trillion. In 8 years, only 8 years, President Bush and the Republicans who supported him more than doubled the national debt. How do you do that? How can you take a debt accumulated from George Washington through President Clinton of $5 trillion and make it $12 trillion in 8 years? You had to work at it.

First, you had to engage in two wars we didn't pay for and then you did something--President Bush did something no President had ever done in the history of the United States. In the midst of a war he declared tax cuts. Remember that Republican theory: If we give tax cuts, this economy is going to mushroom and grow with jobs? It did not work. In fact, it failed miserably. It added to our national debt, more than doubled our national debt during the Bush Presidency, so that when President Bush left office he handed to President Obama a $12 trillion debt--not $5 trillion, $12 trillion. Instead of handing him a surplus in the budget of $120 billion for the next year, as he had been given when he came to office, he announced it would be a $1.2 trillion deficit in the next year. That is what President Obama inherited. And of course jobs were melting away--8 million jobs.

The month President Obama was sworn in as President and took his hand off the Bible, we lost 750,000 jobs, a leftover from the Bush economic policies.

Now come the Republicans. They have announced if they are given control of Congress in the next election, they have an idea of where we should go as a Nation. We should go back to the Bush economic policies. That is what the Republican plan for America is, go back to the Bush economic policies of declaring tax breaks for the wealthiest people in America. Senator McConnell stated proudly on the Sunday talk shows yesterday that he has had the courage to step up and put a bill before Congress of what he thinks we should do as a Nation when it comes to economic policy. He did. It was historic. It was so historic that Senator McConnell suggested a tax program that would nearly double the national debt--nearly double it--during the same period of time: $4 trillion of new debt for America. How does he do it? On the Republican side, by suggesting we continue to give tax breaks to those in the highest income categories in America.

I for one think that is totally irresponsible. In the midst of a recession, let us help working families, middle-income families struggling to pay their bills, struggling to deal with a home mortgage payment where the value of the home may be going down instead of up. Help those families. But for those who are making $1 million a year or more, why in the world would we add to the national debt to give them a $100,000 tax cut a year? Why? It only adds to the national debt.

The Republican theory is, if you give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America, this economy is going to flourish. I say to the Senators on the other side, it is a theory we tested and it failed. It is the same theory we tested over the last 10 years of Bush tax cuts. If tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America is what we need for our economy, I have one basic question after 10 years: Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs to show for it?

Our approach I think is more reasonable, reasonable in that we would give tax breaks and tax cuts to those working- and middle-income families below $250,000 of income so they can get through this tough economy. I don't care if the economists tell us the recession is over. As far as I am concerned, to use the vernacular: It ain't over until it's over, and it ain't over until we start creating jobs again.

That is what this debate on the floor of the Senate is about, not just tax policy but basically what is our policy when it comes to shipping jobs overseas.

I think American workers are the hardest working, most productive workers in the world. Put them up against anybody. Will they work for the lowest wages in the world? No. And they should not. We should have a standard of living in this country that we are proud of. But our workers have shown that when paid a living wage, they are productive workers and can compete with anyone.

Yet American companies have decided they want to ship their jobs overseas and see if they can make more money. As far as I am concerned, that is their choice. I think it is a wrong one. That is their choice. But the last thing in the world we ought to do is give them a tax incentive to ship those jobs overseas. We know what has happened to American families here over the last 10 years and longer in America. They have been falling a little bit behind each and every year, in terms of their earning power.

As the Wall Street Journal, which I do not quote very often, put it recently, it was the ``Lost Decade for Family Income.'' The median income in America fell almost 5 percent between 2000 and 2009.

Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch reported earlier this summer the number of financial millionaires in America rose by 16 percent. Solid middle-class manufacturing jobs have been disappearing across the country. The AFL-CIO estimates that from 2000 to 2007--that was the period of time during the Bush Presidency--the United States lost 5.5 million manufacturing jobs.

In the 8 years before, under President Clinton, we had created 22 million jobs. Under President Bush, we lost 5.5 million manufacturing jobs. By the end of 2009, the fewest number of Americans were working in manufacturing since before World War II. But it is not just the jobs on the shop floor that disappeared during the Bush administration.

Goldman Sachs estimates between 400,000 and 600,000 professional services and information sector jobs have moved overseas in the past few years. That was during a time when these businesses were raking in record profits and jobs were leaving America. Then, when the boom turned into a bust, those wizards of Wall Street, those captains of capitalism, those kings of commerce, those malefactors of great wealth experienced a temporary setback. Profits were down, stocks were down, and so compensation was down on Wall Street, for about 15 minutes.

Corporate profits are now surging, the stock market is roaring back, and endless bonuses are raining down on the chosen few, just like the good old days on Wall Street. But what about the rest of hard-working families across America? What about the families who never have made a million bucks? That is the vast majority of them. What about the families who earned the median wage in this country, about $50,000 a year? Those jobs are not coming back fast enough.

The Recovery Act that we passed last year, with the support of three Republican Senators--only three who would join us in this effort--has at least slowed down the recession and the loss of jobs. It has not produced the turnaround we all want to see. It will take some time. But at least it stopped the recession from becoming even worse.

This recession would not be over yet by anyone's measure had President Obama taken the advice from the other side of the aisle. They believed we should do nothing--nothing--in the midst of a recession. I have heard Senate Republicans come to the floor and criticize President Obama for loaning money to General Motors and Chrysler. I will tell you, in my home State of Illinois, those automobile manufacturing jobs, at General Motors and Chrysler, are good-paying jobs. We have lost a lot of them. But the good news is, those companies are back. They are profitable. They are selling fewer cars and trucks now, but they are selling and they are competitive.

That would never have happened had the Republicans had their way and stopped the President from giving loans necessary to these automobile manufacturers. We would have seen maybe one company, Ford, that might have survived. The other two probably would not be here today in any form, and all the jobs, the tens of thousands of jobs they provide in America, would have been lost.

The Recovery Act saved another 2.7 million Americans from the unemployment roles, according to economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi. In case you think: Well, DURBIN, that must be your favorite Democratic economist, Mark Zandi happened to be JOHN MCCAIN's economist when JOHN MCCAIN ran for President, and he credits the Recovery Act with saving 2.7 million jobs.

But even with all these efforts, there is still a lot to do. It is not enough to help the private sector create more jobs. We need for them to be created right here in America. There is one line I can use anywhere in the State of Illinois, and I will bet across this Nation, which I think typifies what most people think about when they think about our economy.

I will bet you I could use this line in the State of Delaware. The line is this: I would like to go into the store tomorrow and find more products stamped ``made in the USA.'' People start applauding. They are sick and tired of all the imports coming in and all the jobs going away.

I know global competition is a fact of life. America could never be a wealthy nation if we just did one another's laundry. We need to produce goods and services that are competitive on a global basis, and we can do it. We have done it in the past and we can do it again. American workers can compete with the best in the world.

But our laws do not give many of our workers a fighting chance. Why should companies be rewarded for shipping good American jobs overseas? China, Germany and Japan and our other competitors do everything they can to generate more work in their home countries so they can sell products from China and Germany and Japan all around the world.

Meanwhile, our conglomerates and many corporations and their friends in Congress defend offshoring tax loopholes that other countries would never allow to stand. That is why I introduced the bill that is going to be voted on tomorrow, with the help of my colleagues and friends, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader; Senator BYRON DORGAN, who has been our leader for years on this issue; Senator CHUCK SCHUMER of New York, and many others.

It is a bill that has three provisions in it. I think they make sense. First, we will make two changes to discourage U.S. companies from giving out pink slips to Americans while they open the doors at their new factories overseas.

We will say to firms: If you want to shut down operations in the United States and move somewhere else--I hope you do not make that decision, but if you make it, we are not going to give you a tax break to make it easier.

We will also say to the firms, if you want to sell your products in this country that you made overseas, we are not going to let you start making those goods overseas, ship them back to this country, and avoid paying your taxes on your profits, something called deferral.

Second, we will make it more attractive for companies to bring good jobs back home. This is a provision from Senator Schumer of New York, which says to firms: If you bring jobs back from another country, you do not have to pay your share of the payroll taxes on those U.S. workers for 3 years. It is an incentive to bring these jobs back home.

There is nothing radical in this proposal. You would think it would pass by a voice vote. Who in the world would object to ending tax loopholes to send jobs overseas? Who would object to creating tax incentives for bringing jobs from overseas back home?

But that is what this debate is all about. The defenders of these tax loopholes have wasted no time in launching an aggressive lobbying campaign against the bill: The Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers have written in opposition to the bill, and the Republican leader has already spoken on the floor against even debating this bill. He does not want us to bring it up.

The message they send is clear: Corporate profits are more important than American jobs. I could not disagree more. I have watched too many hard-working, middle-class families lose their livelihoods as companies fire American workers and then use the Tax Code to make shifting jobs overseas more profitable.

In August, I was in Rock Falls and Sterling, IL. A woman named Julie came. She had worked at the local national manufacturing company there for 34 years. She was a grandmother, raised her family, and was trying to help with her grandkids. She had just been notified that company was moving overseas.

I said to her: As painful as it is for you to get that pink slip after 34 years of service to that company, I am sorry to tell you that our Tax Code made it easier for that company to leave town, made it easier for them to do away with your job.

I ran into other workers around Illinois as well. To add insult to injury, after a lifetime of working for these businesses, some of these businesses actually bring in the workers from China and Mexico and ask the American workers, in their last week or two of employment, to train the foreign workers to do their jobs. Can you imagine how hard that must be--to realize that tomorrow you are out of work, and the person sitting across the table, whom you are training, is going to have your job?

Then, how about this? How about the fact that the cost of bringing that foreign worker over here to be trained is now tax deductible under our Tax Code? What is wrong with this picture? A good example of a company moving good American jobs overseas happened in Hennepin, IL. The local steel mill there was built in 1966. I remember it. I was a college student out here at the time, and we were so exited. It was Jones Laughlin, if I am not mistaken, when it first started. It changed ownership over the years. It was a big employer in the region around Hennepin.

They employed 600 people at their peak in a steel mill. Imagine that. As of last year, they still had 300 people on the payroll. Arcelor-Mittal, the huge steel conglomerate, bought the plant in 2005. Many in the community said: This is a break, a godsend. That huge company is going to invest in this plant and we are going to keep our jobs.

It did not happen. Arcelor-Mittal decided last year that the profitable plant in Hennepin--they were making money--the profitable plant, was no longer worth keeping open. Just like that, 300 solid, middle-class jobs disappeared.

I received a lot of letters from members of the community. A 10-year-old girl wrote to me:

My dad ..... got laid off by Lakshmi Mittal, at Mittal Steel. You see, instead of selling the plant, Lakshmi decided to ship all of the parts over the oceans .....--

This 10-year-old wrote to me and said--

I think the plant should not be closed because if he shipped the parts all over, then hundreds of peoples' jobs will be lost. Please Help Us!

The heartbreaking news for that young girl is that our Tax Code rewarded the plant for shipping the equipment overseas. This 10-year-old girl, wise beyond her years, heartbroken that her dad had lost his job, may not understand the global implications of plant closings, but she sure knows what it means to her family.

Here is what a 30-year veteran of that plant wrote:

The plant was shut down in the spring even though it made a profit. ..... Being the father of two college freshman, I have to wonder what the future will hold for my children ..... American industry, the backbone of our country, cannot exist in this environment.

Well, I agree. That is why I am on the floor. That is why this bill is on the floor. We have to do something about it. Here is another one. This is a company that once operated in my home State of Illinois, Honeywell International. They closed their plants in Freeport, Rock Island, Spring Valley, and Springfield and then sent the jobs to India, China, and Mexico.

The Department of Labor certified these workers lost their jobs because the jobs were actually sent overseas. In my hometown of Springfield, the plant closing cost us 120 jobs in the capital city. This was a plant that had been in production since 1938, long before I was born, when it produced the world's first electric clock for automobiles. The plant also supplied electrical products to support our troops during World war II. In an instant, this piece of American history vanished to Juarez, Mexico.

I received a letter from a victim of this particular example of offshoring good American jobs. Here is what he wrote to me:

..... stop rewarding Honeywell and other corporations that ship jobs out of the country ..... They don't deserve tax money for making the US unemployment rate go up further.

Well, that is exactly what this bill before us wants to stop. Let me show you one other illustration. U.S. multinationals are increasing hiring abroad and decreasing hiring at home. In total, between 1999, at this end of the chart, and 2008, multinational corporations in the United States added 2.4 million jobs overseas, a 30-percent increase.

Well, there is nothing wrong with companies growing. But look what happened here at home. Here is the problem. During the same period, these American companies cut 1.9 million jobs in America, an 8-percent decrease. It is obvious. The jobs are being shipped overseas and killed at home. This notion by some companies that if you let us produce overseas it will help our jobs back home, it is not happening. Exactly the opposite is happening--jobs overseas, loss of jobs in the United States.

Well, enough is enough. We need to stop rewarding companies, through our Tax Code, for killing American jobs, and we need to create incentives to bring those jobs back home. This bill is very straightforward. It is a clear choice. Senators can decide. Do they want to stand with American workers? Do they want to stand with those corporate interests that want to ship jobs overseas? Do they believe our Tax Code should reward good American companies that pay good wages and good benefits to American workers and stay here or do they want to create an incentive to ship those jobs overseas?

That is what this bill is all about. I hope there will be at least one Republican Senator who will join us in this effort. It would be a breakthrough. I hope it is more than one. But I hope they are hearing the same thing back home. I would just ask those who oppose it to go to your home State, pick the community, pick the town, and invite me to come and debate you, if you are on the other side of the this issue.

You pick it. I want to be in on that debate.

I believe the bottom line is this: The American Tax Code should be designed to help American companies create good-paying jobs right here in the United States. Our focus ought to be to make sure when people walk in stores across America, they can flip that product over and see made in the USA again. With this vote, Senators will be given a choice where they want the next round of job creation to be. Do they want it in the United States or in China? Middle-class families in this country have been struggling for a long time. They are upset. They want more jobs. They want a Congress that will stand up and fight for them. With this vote, they will find out who is going to be on their side.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside and that the Committee on Environment and Public
Works be discharged from further consideration and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3072, introduced by my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Rockefeller, that would delay for 2 years U.S. EPA implementation of carbon regulations; I further ask unanimous consent that if the majority is serious about protecting American jobs, that we must be allowed to take bipartisan action to protect the American people from the backdoor national energy tax coming in the form of new job-killing carbon regulations from EPA; that the bill be read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I say to my colleague from Missouri, clean energy jobs are the jobs of the future. As we create more clean energy jobs, we will find a way to compete with China and other nations that are trying to take over this whole area. They know the whole world is moving toward more sensitivity to emissions and the environmental damage they cause. As a result of that, I object.

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