Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act of 2010--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. I have come to the floor today in support of the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, which I believe, as was well stated by the Senator from California, will go a long way towards promoting job creation in the private sector and leveling the playing field for American workers.

In recent months, reports have shown that retail sales are up, hourly wages are rising, and household debt is at its lowest point in a decade. We have seen some particularly promising bright spots in Minnesota, where our manufacturing exports increased 19 percent in the second quarter to $4.3 billion.

Minnesota also has one of the lower unemployment rates, 7 percent, compared to 9.6 percent nationally.

But while the numbers are starting to point in the right direction, too many Minnesotans, and too many Americans are still out of work. As one of my constituents recently put it, ``unemployment may be 7 percent in the rest of the state, but it's 100 percent in my house. That is what matters to me.''

He is not alone. Nationwide, there are still 15 million Americans out of work, and another 6.6 million who have joined the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

I received a letter from one of them just the other day--a constituent of mine named Jon, from Northfield, MN--and I would like to share what we wrote. He says:

I am 63 years old and I have worked my whole life. I lost my job in January 2009, and I've applied for every job I've seen since--even for some that'd pay half of what I previously earned. What's being done now for the millions of us without work?

The bill we are discussing today is not a silver bullet solution to our economic woes. But it will help answer Jon's question, a question that is on the minds of millions of Americans right now.

First, it will create a payroll tax holiday for businesses by eliminating the employer share of the Social Security payroll tax on wages paid to new U.S. employees. This will be available for 2 years and applies to any new American worker who is hired to replace a foreign employee.

For far too long, we have seen our homegrown jobs shipped overseas. It is time to level the playing field for American workers, and the payroll tax holiday creates a market-based incentive for that. It encourages companies that might otherwise hire foreign employees to create jobs here at home--in places like Northfield, MN, not Mumbai, India.

Second, this bill will close the tax loopholes that have put our workers at a competitive disadvantage, a provision that will also encourage companies to bring jobs back to the U.S.

That is important, but I want to point out that this bill is about more than just job creation. It is about rebuilding our economic foundation. It is about reviving our manufacturing base and moving away from the mindset of the last decade, a mindset that glorified debt, consumption and the empty churn of money.

What we need now are policies that allow us to be a country that thinks, invents, and makes things again, a country where you can walk into any store on any street in any neighborhood, purchase the safest product at the best price and be able to turn it over and see the words: ``Made in the USA'' stamped on the bottom.

As Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist and Minnesota native, has put it, we need to be doing some ``nation building in our own nation.''

I often think about the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the ones that featured that perfectly synchronized 2,000-man drumming routine. Well, those drumbeats are only getting louder and louder.

While China builds the world's leading solar energy industry, we sadly still have not passed an energy bill, despite some that call for a renewable energy standard. While India encourages invention and entrepreneurship, we give our innovators the runaround. And while Brazil produces more engineers, we let our students fall behind.

The world is moving ahead fast. But we are not going to let it pass us by.

As a country, we have always been home to the most productive, innovative, and resourceful workers in the world. I am talking about the men and women who have mined, manufactured and constructed every great product of American innovation, from cars to airplanes to solar panels to satellites.

In other words, the men and women who are doing the kind of work our country was built on, the kind of work that made America great in the first place.

We have before us a bill that makes sure that work is done right here in America, in our factories, in our office buildings and in our manufacturing plants. It is a good step towards not only rebuilding our domestic industry, but towards putting more Americans back to work, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield the floor.

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