Rob Portman: “I rise this evening to talk about an issue that is critical to keeping jobs here in America and keeping investment in…”

“I rise this evening to talk about an issue that is critical to keeping jobs here in America and keeping investment in this country and not driving it overseas. We had another reminder just last week of just how broken our Tax Code is when a huge company, Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company, decided it could no longer compete as a U.S. corporation. Instead it is seeking a merger with an Irish-based drugmaker called Allergan. They want to move their corporate headquarters to Ireland. It is another in a long line of companies that have made this decision because our Tax Code is broken. Unfortunately, these kinds of transactions are called inversions, where a U.S. company buys a smaller company overseas and merges with them to become a foreign company. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is actually bigger than these inversions. It also has to do with foreign companies buying U.S. companies because they can do so because they have a higher aftertax profit and pay a premium. These kinds of transactions are causing our jobs and investments to go overseas. Yesterday we had another indication of that. It was announced that the Irish drug company Shire is going to buy the Massachusetts-based biotech company Dyax for $6.5 billion. By the way, this isn't the first acquisition Shire has made this year. In January they acquired a New Jersey-based company NPS Pharmaceuticals, and in August they bought a privately held company called Foresight Biotherapeutics.…”