John Ensign: “first of all, there is not fungibility this time. Senator Boxer and I worked very closely to make sure there were very…”

“first of all, there is not fungibility this time. Senator Boxer and I worked very closely to make sure there were very tight uses of the money, and there is going to be IRS audits afterward to make sure they use the money exactly how the bill specifies. The other thing is the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee was trying to point out the companies repatriated money and then laid off workers, and he was trying to point out that was somehow a causative effect. It had nothing to do with it. Ford repatriated $1 billion almost and laid off 30,000 to 40,000 employees. OK. Ford had a lot of other problems. These companies had a lot of other problems. Hewlett-Packard had huge problems going on, and the repatriation made it a lot better, so they ended up in a short period of time laying off some people, but in the long run they ended up increasing American employment over the next several years because they were in a better financial position.”