Investing in American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the chairman for yielding.

You would think, listening to our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, that the great recession began after President Obama was sworn in, not recognizing the fact that the day President Bush lost office this country was losing jobs at the rate of 700,000 jobs a month. And in fact, during the entire 8 years of the Bush administration we ended up losing over 600,000 private-sector jobs.

We have been working very hard to dig ourselves out of that hole for a long period of time since then. The last 6 months we have seen private-sector job growth in consecutive months. Not as much as anybody would like to see, but positive growth. And it's interesting to listen to my colleagues, many of whom are showing up to ribbon-cutting ceremonies and groundbreaking ceremonies, taking credit for jobs that have been created by investments made that would never have happened if they had their way, if their votes had been the ones that carried the day.

Now, this legislation is an effort to change a perverse tax policy. We do two things in this legislation. Number one, we make important investments in the Build America Bonds program, an investment in infrastructure and jobs here at home. And we pay for it by cutting down, eliminating these perverse loopholes. Yes, there are lots of corporations out there that don't like this legislation. You know why? Because they will no longer be rewarded by American taxpayers for shipping American jobs overseas. Because that's what this bill does.

Right now our tax code penalizes American taxpayers and creates these incentives for certain corporations to ship American jobs--not American goods, but ship American jobs--overseas. And I think most taxpayers would be outraged if they knew that in addition to paying their own taxes, they would be required to pay the taxes that U.S. multinationals owe to foreign countries for income those corporations generated overseas. That's what's going on.

Through a process called credit splitting, U.S. multinationals are able to use their foreign tax credits to reduce their tax liability here at home even though they may not have repatriated that income back to the United States. That's what this particular loophole does. You can talk about reforming our international tax code, and you are right, there are lots of complicated issues. But this issue is not complicated.

This issue is very simple. Do you want to reward American corporations who are shipping American jobs overseas? And those that are opposing these provisions understandably are benefiting from it, because right now American taxpayers are paying the tab for the taxes that those corporations are paying overseas.

That's not fair, and it creates an inducement to ship those jobs overseas. Let's stop this loophole and use those funds to invest in jobs here in America.

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