Providing For Consideration Of Senate Amendment To H.R. 2847, Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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I oppose neither the rule nor the transportation funding in this bill, but I do oppose the so-called ``jobs'' tax credit. I only have one big problem with it, that it does so little to create jobs while adding to our very big debt.

In deciding whether to waste more resources on such legislation that will not accomplish its purpose, I think it's important that we look at one of the last jobs bills that this Congress considered. We were told that the only way to extend unemployment benefits to families in need through Christmas was to simultaneously approve a measure that sent $33 billion to corporations with no requirement that they use their cash windfall to create or preserve jobs.

The so-called ``loss carry-back'' provision simply directed the Treasury to begin writing checks, $33 billion in checks this year, to corporations. One corporation, a bankrupt financial services company, Washington Mutual, got $2.6 billion in checks this year from the Treasury. That just happens to be a little more than all of the unemployed people in America combined got from this piece of legislation. So I think we need to take a close look at every piece of legislation to see whether it really creates jobs as this one did not.

Today, we have another tax break that is weak on policy, strong on politics. It's a retread proposal that this Congress rejected last year, and it doesn't smell any better this year. Indeed, one former Treasury Department economist has described ``a general consensus among tax experts that the credit is a [real] stinker'' because it simply encourages conduct that would occur anyway.

Amazingly, one current top leader at the Treasury Department has said, Don't worry, it may be 10 percent effective in creating new jobs. I don't think that passes the sniff test. Surely there are better ways to promote job growth than a proposal whose own advocates say it may be 90 percent ineffective.

And being ineffective does not mean that it is harmless since it disadvantages some businesses in the marketplace versus their competitors. Those small businesses in Central Texas who have hung on to their employees, even though it hurt, even though it was painful to do so, get absolutely no benefit from this job tax credit, although they certainly could use it, but a company that dismissed its employees last year or a new competitor that moves into town down the street will gain a benefit.

As the Congressional Budget Office has noted, this jobs credit would provide no incentive to maintain employment in struggling firms and provides less incentive to maintain employment overall in industries and regions that are hurting the most. While it may deliver a few temporary minimum-wage jobs at considerable expense to the United States Treasury, this credit won't deliver help where it is needed most, and to whom or with whom it is needed the most. It is off-target and off-budget. I think it has the same problem as a bill that gave more money to one bankrupt corporation than to all the unemployed people in our country.

It's great that the United States Senate could finally find bipartisan agreement on something, but this bill, this job tax credit, is not just bipartisan from the Senate, it's bi-wrong.

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