Outsourcing Accountability Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the ranking member yielding me the time.

As I was hearing my colleagues describe what this bill does and whom it is targeted at, it just struck me, there is an untethering from reality of what our economy is and how our economy functions.

Certainly, along any of the border--and, yes, we have a northern border, while in Michigan it is actually to the east of us. When you look at what happens in the automotive industry, and when you look at what happens in the agricultural industry, that is the most porous border in the world because that is our largest trading partner in the world. In just the State of Michigan alone, Canada is the seventh or eighth largest trading partnership in the entire world.

As we have been piling on regulation upon regulation over the last number of decades, Mr. Chairman, you saw companies leaving the United States. Sometimes, though, they were for different reasons. It is the supply chain. It didn't have anything to do with lower labor markets in Canada. The UAW strike also was the Canadian workers' strike. This is all linked together.

In the bill itself, there is a disclosure requirement that we have to desegregate by State, the District of Columbia, Commonwealth, territory, and possession, and compare a percentage. So, Mr. Chairman, as you are shifting from Ohio to Detroit, Indiana, or Wisconsin, you are going to have to track all of those things as you are going through--by the way, not by numbers but by percentages of the total number of employees who physically work in and domicile in another country outside of the United States.

Again, you are going to have to do that same thing as you are shifting automotive parts production between subsidiaries. That happens all the time, whether it is going from Troy, Michigan, or to Windsor, Ontario.

That is a free flow that goes back and forth all the time. That has nothing to do with some nefarious shipping of jobs overseas. That is called supply chain.

So this bill is flawed because it paints an incomplete company picture. Simply knowing one percentage of a company's workforce residing abroad--which obviously means everywhere and on anything--just really does not give you any kind of picture or flavor or test of what is happening within that.

And, yes, it is duplicative. In fact, I will have an amendment on this bill a little bit later. We already have conflict mineral reporting. We have all kinds of other reporting that had happened because of Dodd-Frank.

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Mr. HUIZENGA. I can tell you that the lack of competitiveness in the United States and one of the challenges that we have on our committee that we constantly talk about is how do we make sure that the United States is an area for growth, innovation, entrepreneurship.

Because these companies that are now public, none of them started out public. They became public companies. And we have seen a plunge in the number of publicly traded companies. That is why I supported regulatory reform. That is why I supported tax reform, because we had to make the United States more competitive.

This bill does nothing to help the United States become more competitive. It becomes less competitive and more burdensome, and all with the goal of shaming companies, not actually getting aggregate information that helps anybody.
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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, what we just heard a little while ago from the other side of the aisle can be easily explained. They don't understand the power of the Federal Government fully on how it can deter growth in our economy.

It is not one big, giant thing. It is death by a thousand cuts. It is creating the atmosphere or destroying the atmosphere that allows innovation, allows growth, and allows the entrepreneurial spirit that has set America apart from the rest of the world. It is putting it on the chopping block.

That is why I oppose this bill. Once again, we are using the massive power of the Federal Government to bully companies around.

I am kind of curious, if this is all about foreign jobs, why in the world, under section (A)(i), we are going to need all this information disaggregated by State--by State.

This has nothing to do with whether a job is going to Mexico or China or Vietnam or Canada. It has to do with whether it is going from Michigan to Ohio or from Indiana to Iowa.

Yet, you are going to force the companies to continue to do all of this work for zero benefit, no benefit--not a benefit to an investor, not a benefit to the employee, certainly, unless, apparently, you have something against Michigan or against Ohio. I have got something against their university, not the State.

But why we continue to just pile this on is why I believe this is deeply flawed and it paints incomplete pictures of what is going on.

So, today, my amendment is this: I am offering a simple amendment that would exempt issuers from making these disclosures if they are already required to make a CEO pay ratio disclosure and disclosures relating to conflict minerals.

I cannot describe to you fully in these 5 minutes the damage that has been done with conflict minerals alone in a wide swath of industries, including the automotive industry.

People would think: Why in the world would that have anything to do with it? It has been hundreds and hundreds of man-hours to try to track something down that is untrackable. We still have no idea where all this is.

So, my amendment today--and, if this is really about foreign jobs and all those kinds of things, which we know it is really not because we need to disaggregate it by State; but, if it is about that, then it is time for the authors to step up and support this amendment.

We need to stop mandating frivolous disclosures for public companies. Well, we already have two with the CEO pay ratio and the conflict minerals.

I believe this is reasonable to say, that if you already are doing those, you no longer have to do these additional disclosures.

We should be looking at ways to lower costs, reducing barriers on those seeking to become the next Ford, the next Amazon, the next Microsoft. Instead, we are just putting up speed bump after speed bump after speed bump. What happens, Mr. Chair, is those speed bumps eventually turn into a wall, and that stops all progress.

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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, I will make it quick, because this is pretty easy.

What you just heard isn't true, Mr. Chairman, because if, truly, the other side cared about anytime there was a job getting shipped overseas, they would not have, under the (B)(2) disclosure requirement, an exemption with respect to an emerging growth company.

If they actually put their money where their mouth is, they wouldn't have that exclusion in there because, apparently, an automotive job isn't as valuable as an emerging growth company job.

So, I am confused. If that is really what it is all about, then we ought to make sure that the rules apply to everybody and that there should not be an exemption.

And I am confused as to why the author of this bill would allow that to happen, would allow those technology companies to ship those jobs overseas, without any respect of having to report that.

Obviously, Mr. Chairman, I am being a little sarcastic, but it just goes to show why this is a flawed bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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