Byron Dorgan: “What I have not mentioned in discussion, because it is slightly different but probably an even more important…”

“What I have not mentioned in discussion, because it is slightly different but probably an even more important discussion, is that 73 percent of foreign corporations doing business in America pay zero in Federal income taxes to this country--not a little, or not much, they pay zero. Mr. President, 73 percent of foreign corporations doing business in America--and those names everyone would understand and recognize instantly; they are the names on the products people are buying in this country--they do hundreds of billions of dollars of business in this country every year, and 73 percent of them pay zero in taxes to our country. A slightly different issue but in the same general family of tax problems, in addition to the strainer through which all of this flows and through which these corporations can come in, earn billions of dollars and pay zero taxes in our country, in addition to that, we actually have a provision in this Tax Code that says, by the way, if you are an American company and you are having to compete against a foreign corporation coming into our country--what is the solution? Move your jobs, leave our country, produce in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, produce elsewhere. Hire foreign workers. Not only can you get a tax break, you can get lower wages over there. You can hire somebody for 14 cents an hour, a quarter an hour, 50 cents an hour, $1 an hour. You do not have to worry about pumping effluents into the air, dumping chemicals into the water.”