John Ensign: “first of all, I wish to congratulate and thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer. A few years ago, we worked…”

“first of all, I wish to congratulate and thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer. A few years ago, we worked on an amendment together. Not a lot of people knew about it. The first time it was voted on in the Finance Committee, most of the Republicans in the Finance Committee voted against it. I remember talking to Senator Nickles at the time. He was leading the charge with the Republicans against the amendment, frankly, because a lot of people did not understand it. It does not sound right that someone who invested overseas can bring the money back for less than what they pay in the United States. But the problem is that companies, if they have to pay a 35-percent tax on the money to bring it back, as Senator Boxer and I recognized it is common sense, they are not going to bring the money back. The chart Senator Boxer had clearly showed that. Very small amounts each year of the profits that companies made overseas actually came back into the United States, until we passed what we called, at the time, the Invest in the USA Act. The outside economists got it. They understood it. They projected-- Allen Sinai, who was the economist at the time, did the studies. He predicted between $300 and $400 billion would come back to the United States and it would actually produce tax revenues, it would produce jobs. Guess what happened, $360 billion came back to the United States.”