Washington, DC – Today Senate Republicans filibustered the Bring Jobs Home Act, killing the legislation on a procedural vote. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a cosponsor of the bill, released the statement below regarding the failed vote:
“Today Senate Republicans voted to preserve a tax loophole that rewards companies for sending jobs overseas, and declined to support companies that bring jobs back to America. That might make their big business allies in the Chamber of Commerce happy, but it’s not going to help American workers. I fought for the Bring Jobs Home Act because tax policy should encourage job creation in America, not overseas. Rhode Island taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill to send jobs to other countries. I’m disappointed that my Republican colleagues don’t agree.”
Right now companies are allowed to deduct from their taxable income the expenses of moving operations to other countries. The Bring Jobs Home Act would have ended that loophole and would have also offered companies a tax credit equal to 20 percent of the cost of bringing jobs back to America.
An estimated 2.4 million American manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas over the last ten years. Rhode Island in particular lost more than 20,000 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2011 – the greatest proportion of any state in the country according to a Wall Street Journal study.
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