The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S5069-S5071 on June 17, 2010.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have filed an amendment to the underlying legislation. I know there is discussion about who might get an amendment. A lot have been filed. There is negotiation about which amendments might be made pending and debated. I hope this amendment will be. It has had a long and tortured history. It is an amendment I offered when the now-President, Barack Obama, was a Senator, and he strongly supported it. In fact, during his campaign, he talked a lot about this subject. It is the issue of shutting down a perverse tax incentive that exists in this country for shipping jobs overseas.
We provide tax incentives if you are willing to shut down your factory, fire your workers, and move your product elsewhere; we say we will give you a tax break. That is unbelievable. We have had four recorded votes in the Senate. I have lost all of them.
As it seems, many people believe we ought to continue this tax incentive. I think we ought to continue to try to get a majority in the Senate to agree with the proposition that, at long last, we have to stop subsidizing shipping American jobs overseas.
On this chart is a description of the ``cool, refreshing taste of mint dipped in dark chocolate.'' The ad, by Hershey's, is for their York Peppermint Patty, and it says, ``the cool, refreshing taste of mint dipped in dark chocolate will take you miles away.'' Little did we know that it will actually take you to Mexico, because that is where they began to make these mint patties. They used to be American made, all-American mint patties. But now they have gone to Mexico. In fact, 260 jobs were moved to Monterrey, Mexico, as part of a long-term Hershey's strategy. So that is mint patties. I suppose they are not as important as, perhaps, automobiles, or jobs that are making sophisticated high-tech equipment. But still and all it is mint patties.
Hallmark Cards, an American company, privately held in Kansas City, MO, with a 100-year history in our country. It was founded by a high school dropout who started this company in 1910 with shoe box postcards. He sold a shoe box full of postcards, while living at the YMCA in Kansas City. This became a fabulously successful card company. In fact, all of us have used Hallmark cards to send a message to someone. When they say ``if you care enough to send the very best,'' they don't exactly now say where to send it. If you are going to send it where they are made, they have gone to China. What kind of a card do you send to a Hallmark employee whose job is now in China, where they are making Hallmark cards? So that is mints and cards--probably, as I say, not as important as making automobiles. But those jobs have also left.
Making refrigerators. Whirlpool has been involved, as well, in moving jobs. I have talked about this previously. Whirlpool refrigerators moved jobs all over the world from Evansville, IN. They moved work to a factory in Mexico, even though the company accepted a $19.3 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop smart appliances. Those smart appliances left to go south. So Whirlpool appliances have gone to Mexico, and 1,100 U.S. jobs moved to Mexico.
This is a picture of a woman named Natalie Ford, 42 years old, who worked at a Whirlpool appliance plant in Evansville for 19 years. She learned that her job was moving to Mexico in November of 2009. That is a photograph of Natalie when she discovered that her 19-year investment in this company was over.
It was like a punch in the gut, she said.
I notice every month we focus on this issue: How many jobs have we created in this country? How many have we lost? How many people are filing for unemployment insurance?
I consider the job thing like a bathtub. You have a faucet that puts jobs in, creating jobs in this economy, and then you have a drain, and it is wide open. We are talking about how many jobs we create next month, and the drain is wide open. They are going to China.
For example, I will show a couple of photographs of where some of these jobs go.
This is the home of a Salvadoran worker who makes NFL jerseys. They sell for $80 apiece in the United States of America--NFL football jerseys. Here is the home of the worker. I have held hearing after hearing about these issues.
This is a Reebok NFL jersey made by a Chinese-owned sweatshop in El Salvador. Again, that merges all the best of what we know is wrong with the issue of the migration of jobs--a Chinese-owned sweatshop in El Salvador making NFL jerseys for Reebok.
I have held hearings, and I have had people who work in El Salvador testify at hearings. I will not spend much time on this because I have shown it on the Senate floor so many times. This is Radio Flyer, a little red wagon made in Chicago. This a 110-year-old company, made by a wonderful immigrant who loved radios and loved airplanes, built a little red wagon that every kid in this country has ridden in. What did they name the little red wagon? Radio Flyer, because he liked airplanes and radios. We all understand what Radio Flyer means. It means a little red wagon that pulls kids. But they are gone. They are not made in Illinois any longer. They are all gone to China. Maybe that is OK if one doesn't care where these things are made and where the jobs are.
Finally, Huffy bicycles. I know I have described this company forever. But those who worked there were paid $11 an hour, and they all lost their jobs--all of them. There is still a Huffy bicycle. All the jobs went to China. They then declared bankruptcy, and all the pension plans of all the people fired in the United States making Huffy bicycles, made for decades, were taken over by the Federal Government because the company declared bankruptcy. Now the Chinese own the brand and they make these bikes in China.
I know who makes them. They are made by Chinese workers who make 30, 40, 50, 60 cents an hour tops. They work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. That is what is happening.
I have not described the automobiles and what is happening, or the airplanes parts for that matter. The list is very substantial. I have spoken about it at great length.
I described that Fruit of the Loom underwear left America. Maybe underwear is more important or less important than chocolate mints or Hallmark Cards. I don't know. Fruit of the Loom is the company that used to have the dancing grapes, the red grapes and green grapes people would dress up as. I don't know what kind of people dress up in grape outfits. They seem to have fun. They advertised Fruit of the Loom underwear.
All of a sudden, there is not any underwear made in the United States by Fruit of the Loom. Do you know there is not one pair of Levis made in the United States? Not one. Talk about the all-American company, buying your first pair of Levis, buying a pair of Levis for school, there is not one pair of Levis made in the United States. It has all migrated, all gone.
Here is the proposition. We stand idly by while month after month these jobs are leaving. I described previously on the floor about an airplane trip I took about 4 or 5 months ago. I sat next to a man who was wearing a gym outfit, sweat pants, and so on. He was pretty comfortable on that airplane.
I said: Where are you headed?
He said: I am heading to Asia. I am going to be on a long trip, 25, 30 hours, so I decided to dress down.
He was wearing one of those sweat outfits.
I said: Why are you going to Asia?
He said: My company wants to move the jobs and have the products that we buy from the suppliers made in Singapore, Thailand, and China. So I am going on a trip to Singapore, Thailand, and China to take a look at where we can move these jobs to these countries.
I thought, here is a guy sitting on a plane, wearing a sweat suit, and he is going someplace and there are perhaps thousands of workers whose job is going to be traded away because somebody decided: We can make those kinds of products less expensively if we can find people who will work for 30 cents an hour.
Perversely, it is not just that. We have also decided, if they will do that--just shut the door, fire the workers, chain the factory gate--
we will give them a big, fat tax break.
If you have two companies across the street from each other--both making the same product, both doing the same thing, both employing the same number of people--and one says they are moving to China, fires the workers, locks the gate, and the other says they are staying here, guess what the difference is the next year. If they make the same amount of money, then the company that stays here pays higher taxes and the company that leaves pays lower taxes. That is the perverse, insane tax incentive that exists in our Tax Code.
The amendment I have filed deals with the issue of what is called deferral--deferring the obligation to have to pay taxes to a later date when you repatriate the income. I do not eliminate deferral altogether. I eliminate deferral when a company leaves our country to go abroad and produce a product to sell back into our marketplace. If that is your motive, then you ought not get a tax break from this government or this country. It makes no sense for us to continue this behavior.
As I have indicated, I have required votes on this issue. We have had debates and I required votes. There are people in this Chamber who cast a vote against an amendment such as this and then rush off the floor and they will even be the ones who talk about how they support American jobs.
Don't tell me you support an American job if you support a tax incentive that moves our jobs overseas. Just don't tell me because it is not true.
We will again next month, right on the edge of a knife, be wondering what is happening to this economy by the evidence of unemployment numbers or the evidence of new jobs created. As I said, it is fine, and I work with all the people here. In fact, the bill that is on the floor is the so-called extender bill, a jobs bill, an attempt to invest in new jobs in this country, incentivize new jobs in this country. To the extent we create new jobs in this country and at the same time incentivize jobs running out of the country, that is just boneheaded. We cannot keep doing that.
At some point, the Congress has to decide, based on some reservoir of common sense, that we are not going to provide incentives for people who move American jobs elsewhere. We have trouble enough competing with labor conditions that exist, as I have described in those charts, with a number of circumstances that exist in the hiring of workers in China who you can work 7 days a week, 12, 14 hours a day and, by the way, you can house them and sleep them in a cinder-block room that holds 12 people. That is what is happening. We have trouble enough competing with that, let alone giving a big tax incentive to somebody who says: That is where I want to do my business.
I am just saying, I filed an amendment. I know there is a dance going on here to decide who gets votes and who doesn't. If we are worried about this economy and worried about trying to incentivize American jobs, we have to vote on this amendment and we ought to pass it with a resounding vote.
Does anybody here care about whether ``Made in America'' once again is something we can put as a sticker on a product? Do we care at all? Or is it just that we do not need to make anything? It seems to me America's future is to understand and learn from our past that we are a strong, world-class economy only when we have a world-class manufacturing base. We will not long remain a world-class economy if we decide it does not matter what our manufacturing base is.
In the previous 9 years ending in 2009, we lost more than 5 million jobs in the manufacturing base of people who make things. I am talking about people who go to work and take a shower after work. They are on a factory floor and making real products, ``Made in America.'' That has been the reservoir and source of a lot of good jobs that pay well with good benefits. It always has been. That is what largely expanded the middle class in this country.
Now there is some notion that it does not matter somehow; this is just a world economy and it does not matter. Get on your airplane, search around the planet. Where can you land that plane, open a plant, and hire somebody for 30 cents an hour? I tell you what, the question of who is going to clear the products that are for sale from the shelves in this country is a very interesting question.
Mr. Ford, when he opened his Ford plant to begin building automobiles, believed that you ought to pay a wage to the workers that gave the workers a chance to buy the product they make. In the larger aggregate sense, the question is, Who will buy the products on the shelves if people do not have jobs? You fire your workers and you make Hershey's mint patties in Mexico, or you make Hallmark Cards in China, or you decide to make bicycles, little red wagons, automobiles, trucks, and airplanes elsewhere. Who is going to be on the factory floor producing products in this country? Who is going to earn the wage by which they become consumers?
We are short about 20 million jobs right now in this country, and 20 million jobs is what we need to put people to work.
We have just gone through commencement exercises in this country. There are a lot of kids who put on a cap and a gown with enormous pride, finally graduated from college, and a whole lot of them cannot find a thing to do. They cannot find work.
This President, when he walked across the threshold of the door of the White House, inherited a $1.3 trillion Federal budget deficit left by the previous administration. Had he done nothing, had he been Rip Van Winkle and slept for 10 months or a year, we were going to have a
$1.3 trillion deficit. That is what he inherited, and an economy that was in desperate condition.
He has done everything he can to try to put this back on track. It is hard, and it requires both parties and the best ideas of both. This ought not be difficult. This idea of stopping this insidious subsidy from moving American jobs overseas ought to be an idea that takes root here and garners 90 votes, 95 votes. Instead, we have lost the vote on this amendment over recent years four times.
I started by saying that President Barack Obama, when serving in the Senate, was a supporter of this amendment. He voted for this amendment and believed in this approach. He still does. He has talked about it. I hope very much we will get a vote in the Senate on this today or tomorrow and put the Senate on record as having taken the first step in doing something meaningful to shut the drain and begin the process of saying to people: If you stay here, if you manufacture here, if you run a plant here and produce a product here, God bless you. We are on your side. We are not going to give your competitors who leave and move jobs to China a tax break. We are on your side if you stay here.
That is what we ought to be doing, investing in American jobs, investing in products made in our country, investing once again in a strong manufacturing base in order to remain a world-class economic power.
Madam President, at that point, I have exhausted all of the arguments once again for this amendment, hoping that enough will have listened or perhaps be given information that this is a worthy vote if you want to stand up for American jobs.
Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). Without objection, it is so ordered.
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