Rob Portman: “I was listening to my colleague from Illinois talking about the need for us to have economic patriotism and to keep…”

“I was listening to my colleague from Illinois talking about the need for us to have economic patriotism and to keep people from moving jobs offshore. I couldn't agree more, but the way to do it is to fix a broken Tax Code. It is frustrating to me that we have the President of the United States, we have Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who have talked and talked and talked about the fact that we need to lower our tax rate and come up with a more competitive international tax system, and yet we do nothing about it. Instead, we are for these one-off political debates that we are going to have on the floor this week, apparently, that unfortunately aren't going to make any difference to the workers in America who are seeing this erosion of their wages, of their benefits, and often of their jobs because Washington is abdicating its responsibility. Washington is not doing what it has to do in order to meet its fiduciary responsibilities. There is a lot of talk about that with these corporations. Our responsibility is to the people--to have the right tax system in place so that people can succeed so that if they work hard and play by the rules, the Tax Code is actually going to reward them and American companies can be competitive. That is simply not what is happening now.…”