The Senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 3816, Democrats’ competitive disadvantage bill to raise taxes on certain companies. At 11:30, the Senate began a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to S.3816. If cloture is not invoked, the Senate will immediately begin a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3801, the vehicle for the continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government past the end of the 2010 fiscal year on Thursday.
The Hill reports today, “Senate Democrats are moving forward with a vote on legislation they say will restrict the ability of U.S. companies to move jobs overseas, even as Republicans decry the legislation as mere election-year posturing. Democratic leaders are not optimistic they will achieve the 60-vote total needed to break a filibuster and bring the bill up for a final vote.” CongressDaily adds, “Democrats are now talking up a vote today on an anti-outsourcing bill they had until last week spent little time touting and which Democratic leaders forthrightly acknowledge will not pass and is on the floor mostly for political symbolism.”
This shows once again that the bill Democrats’ spent all day pushing yesterday is an unserious attempt at legislation, meant instead to message prior to leaving for the fall campaign. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said morning, “[W]ith just three days left in the Democrats’ two-year experiment in expanded government, they want to make a good last impression with a bill that they know has no chance of passing and which they have no interest in passing. So this is about as pure a political exercise as you can get.”
The Hill writes, “GOP aides compared Tuesday’s vote to [Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s reintroduction of the Disclose Act last week . . . . With the key Senate votes on the Disclose Act unmoved, Republicans viewed the vote as a partisan political exercise meant to put them on record as supporting corporations over middle-class Americans. ‘This is just another bill Democrats are pushing in hopes it will help them come November,’ one senior GOP aide said of the outsourcing bill. . . . ‘They’ve got a time crunch, they’ve got members not coming back, they’ve got Democrats on their side who are not serious about this bill — and they’ve written a revenue bill in the Senate instead of the House,’ the aide said.”
And even if Democrats were serious about this bill, it’s simply not a good idea. Democrats have expressed serious reservations about the bill. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the Finance Committee chairman, told CongressDaily last week, “I think it puts the United States at a competitive disadvantage. That’s why I’m concerned.” And according to The Hill, “Another GOP leadership aide . . . noted that four Democratic senators — Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Maria Cantwell of Washington state and Ben Nelson of Nebraska — all opposed the bill in 2005.”
The Democrats’ competitive disadvantage bill is simply bad on the merits, as The Wall Street Journal explained in an editorial yesterday. “We're all for increasing jobs in the U.S., but [this] plan reveals how out of touch Democrats are with the real world of tax competition. The U.S. already has one of the most punitive corporate tax regimes in the world and this tax increase would make that competitive disadvantage much worse, accelerating the very outsourcing of jobs that Mr. Obama says he wants to reverse.”
Today, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that Democrats’ plan to adjourn Congress without stopping the coming tax hikes on all Americans will further impede economic recovery. Under the headline “CBO: Scheduled tax increases will hinder recovery,”
The Hill reports on the CBO’s findings: “The Economic Outlook released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday states that coming tax hikes will hinder spending and hurt recovery efforts.Sen. McConnell noted this morning, “As a number of my colleagues pointed out yesterday, the way to get U.S. businesses to produce more here isn’t to tax them even further, it’s to stop punishing them with our high corporate tax rate. If American businesses are going to compete with foreign corporations, we should have competitive tax rates. It’s that simple.”
“‘[The] scheduled increases in taxes and the waning of fiscal policy measures that supported the economy earlier in this recovery will hold down spending, especially in 2011,’ it states. ‘The weak demand for goods and services resulting from those various factors is the primary constraint on economic recovery.’”
In an effort to provide some measure of certainty to small businesses afraid to hire new employees without knowing what their tax rates will be less than 100 days from now, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) once again called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to hold an open and fair debate – and an up-or-down vote – on stopping all of the tax hikes on American families and small businesses. ABC News reported on the Republican effort to secure a vote on stopping all the tax hikes BEFORE Congress adjourns for the fall.
Democrats still don’t seem to get it. Across the country, job creators are frustrated by the uncertainty stemming from Washington Democrats’ big government legislation. Employers are worried as they try to figure out whether the new financial regulation bill will impact them, whether they can afford to continue to offer health care after President Obama’s massive takeover, and whether their taxes will go way up in January. And now Democrats are proposing even more punitive taxes on American companies?
As Sen. McConnell (R-KY) said today, “Democrats made a very clear choice. They chose to ignore the concerns of the American people and to press ahead with their own agenda over the past year and a half. And now, in the last three days of the session, they’ve decided they can at least pretend to be concerned. ”
Tags: Washington, D.C., US Senate, US House, political games, Democrats, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, jobs, tax cuts, CBO, household incomes To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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