John Ensign: “First of all, to set the record straight, Senators Bingaman and Kerry both voted no the last time. Several other things.…”

“First of all, to set the record straight, Senators Bingaman and Kerry both voted no the last time. Several other things. The Senator from North Dakota said he would like all Americans to pay a 5-percent income tax, such as in this bill. Well, that means that he would raise taxes on 40 million Americans who pay no income tax today. Let's get the facts clear. Last time, $360 billion came back into the country and created about 2 million jobs. This time, more money is going to come back. Almost double, about $565 billion the estimates are, is going to come back this time. We have to ask ourselves this commonsense question. The opponents would argue the money came back last time and no jobs were created. From a commonsense perspective, if the companies did not do anything that they said they were going to do last time, if money is in the United States--you need capital to create jobs. Right now we have a banking system that does not have capital. Capital markets are shut down. Guess what? Jobs are not being created because there is no capital to invest to create jobs. If $360 billion came back last time and $565 billion is going to come back this time, doesn't anybody with any kind of common sense know jobs are going to be created with that? We have to get real. Put your thinking caps on. I don't care what Joint Tax says. I don't care what the CRS says.”