John B. Breaux: “I close on this amendment with the following comments: In this legislation, we are giving U.S. companies that hire…”

“I close on this amendment with the following comments: In this legislation, we are giving U.S. companies that hire foreign workers in foreign countries and putting their money that they earned in tax savings the opportunity, the gift, to bring back to this country those earnings and not pay what every other U.S. corporation pays in taxes but to give them an 85-percent tax cut because they operated overseas and hired foreign workers and made products in foreign countries. We are going to give them an 85-percent tax cut over current law if they bring the money back over here. The argument is that somehow that is going to create more jobs over here. But there is no requirement that a single additional job be created. They do not have to create one more job or spend one more dollar on research and development than they did last year under the current bill without the Breaux-Feinstein amendment. The Breaux-Feinstein amendment seeks to install responsibility that says: All right, if corporations want to bring it back for those purposes, even though it is going to cost the taxpayer $3.7 billion-- some people outside of Washington may think that is a lot of money; I think it is a lot of money--$3.7 billion is the cost of this legislation without the Breaux-Feinstein amendment. The bottom line is there is no guarantee that they will spend one dollar more on creating a job, capital expenditures, or research and development than they did last year.”