[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 47 (Monday, April 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3257-S3258]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE ISSUE OF TAXES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on the issue of taxes, today is tax day, 
April 15. And there will be a lot of discussion--I think even later 
this morning--on the floor about taxes. I do not think anyone in this 
country particularly likes to pay taxes. I understand that. I 
personally take great pride in paying taxes to help create wonderful 
schools that will educate our children. All of us ought to beam a 
little about that. We created opportunities in our country--building 
roads, building schools, doing a lot of things that have made life 
better in our country. So I understand that. But I understand that on 
tax day most people would prefer to pay a lesser amount of taxes, and 
most people do not very much like the Tax Code that we have. It is too 
complicated. It is sometimes unfair. And there is not any reason that 
we ought to have a Sears Roebuck-style catalog in order to try to have 
to read through and understand the rules of our Tax Code. We ought to 
be able to do this simpler than that. I hope working together that we 
will find a way to do it.
  But I want to focus on a couple of things in the Tax Code that kind 
of relates to what I was talking about on the minimum wage. There is 
always a way for the bigger interests to fill the hallways out here 
with really smart people who conceive of ways themselves to avoid 
paying taxes, or of ways for someone else to pay a little less in 
taxes. I will give you some examples of that. We have a provision in 
our Tax Code that I have talked about half a dozen times that says to 
companies close your plants in America, move it and your jobs overseas, 
get rid of your American workers, hire foreign workers, get a foreign 
plant and foreign work, produce the same product, and then ship it back 
to our country and we will make you a deal. If you do that, we will 
give you a tax cut. Most people would think that cannot be the case. 
Anyone who proposed that would have about a 2-second political life. 
No. That is true. It is in the Tax Code. I have tried to get it out of 
the Tax Code. I lost last year by a 52 to 47 vote on the Senate floor. 
We are going to vote on that again this week. I am going to offer an 
amendment to the immigration bill that proposes that we shut down the 
insidious tax loophole that encourages somebody to shut their American 
plant, move their U.S. jobs overseas and then produce the same product 
and ship it back into our country. We will have another vote this week 
on that.
  We also have had this debate about the budget balancing proposal that 
was vetoed by the President. And it is interesting. When you take a 
look at some of these details that are put into these large pieces of 
legislation, which by the way alters in favor of the line-item veto 
which I supported--I am delighted the President will now have that--but 
in that big budget bill there a number of little provisions. Let me 
cite one of them.
  One was a provision which called to repeal section 956(A) of the Tax 
Code. There are not two people awake in America who understand what 
that is except the companies who are going to benefit from it. That was 
a little provision stuck in the bill that was supposed to balance the 
Federal budget that went to the President and he vetoed it, a little 
provision that says, by the way let us spend $244 million making it 
more attractive on top of the already perverse incentive we have in the 
Tax Code to move your jobs overseas--repeal of section 956(A). I have 
asked on four or five occasions, is there someone in the Chamber of the 
Senate--of course, there is no one here now because we are not having 
votes today--when everyone gets here who would stand up and raise their 
hand and say, ``Yes, I support that. That is my provision. I sure like 
that notion. Let us provide more benefits to people who move their jobs 
overseas?'' Do you know something? I could not find one Senator who 
would stand up and support it. It is like the blimps in the defense 
bill. We wrote in $60 million to buy blimps in the defense bill.
  So I said, ``Will anyone in the Chamber tell me who thought we should 
spend money in the defense bill to buy blimps?'' I could not find a 
one. It is funny how difficult it is to find people in the Senate when 
you discover a provision in law or a provision that is proposed in the 
Balanced Budget Act that would actually reward, above the current 
incentive, companies for moving their jobs overseas.
  Most of us understand what has happened to American jobs. There have 
been some jobs created in the service sector, but we have lost about 3 
million good-paying manufacturing jobs in this country since 1979--3 
million manufacturing jobs. When you talk about manufacturing, then you 
are not talking about minimum wage. Manufacturing represents the seed 
bed of good jobs with good income in this country, and that is why I 
have talked again and again in the Chamber about measuring America's 
economic progress not by what we consume but by what we produce, 
because what we produce is what matters. That is what economic health 
is about. Do we retain a strong manufacturing sector in this country? 
Do we retain strong jobs that pay well in this country?
  At the same time we are all talking about wanting to do that, we have 
in the Tax Code--and I bring it to the attention of the Senate on tax 
day--a provision that says we would like to reward you if you leave 
America. Take your jobs and go, take your plant and run, and we will 
give you a reward. In fact, all the rest of the American taxpayers will 
pay for it; $2.2 billion is the reward for companies that move their 
jobs overseas--$2.2 billion.
  That does not come from me. That comes from the Joint Tax Committee. 
That is their estimate of how much revenue is lost in this country 
because we provide an incentive for those who would close their 
American plants and move their American jobs overseas, produce the same 
product they used to produce here and then ship it all back to United 
States. And what has happened? The only thing that has happened is that 
we no longer have the jobs in America. Somebody overseas has those 
jobs, and someone who controls those jobs makes more money and pays no 
taxes.
  In my judgment, that is no way on tax day to celebrate. What we ought 
to do on tax day is talk about things we all talk about--complexity, 
yes. Let us simplify the Tax Code. Let us make it

[[Page S3258]]

more fair even as we make it more simple. But at the same time let us 
decide that that Tax Code ought to be neutral on the subject of moving 
jobs. The Tax Code ought not be tilted in favor of taking your jobs and 
leaving the United States of America.
  Those are the kinds of issues that I think we as a Senate will have 
to confront in the rest of 1996. I know it is an election year, and I 
know some predict that not much can be done because we have all the 
tensions, and so on. The businesses of this country will not wait for 
an election. We will be hard pressed to explain to someone who is 
struggling out there at the minimum wage that, well, we cannot really 
deal with this now because there is an election coming. That is just 
something we cannot deal with. There is too much controversy, and we 
just are not able to do it. That is going to be lost on a lot of people 
who are trying very hard to make a living day after day.
  There is not in this Senate one side of the aisle that cares a lot 
about people and the other side that does not. That is not the case I 
am trying to make. But there has been a confluence of public policies 
in the last year and a half that represent a more extreme view of where 
we ought to head--the notion that somehow the only thing that makes the 
American engine work is if you pour in some petroleum from the top. It 
is classically the old trickle-down approach; if you help everybody at 
the top, somehow everybody at the bottom gets damp or somebody at the 
bottom benefits.
  Hubert Humphrey, who was our neighbor over in Minnesota, a wonderful 
man, said, ``I have a different view of this. My view is the `percolate 
up' theory in our country. You give everyone in this country a little 
opportunity to be able to do well and things percolate up and make this 
American engine run.'' He said ``This trickle down, that is the 
approach where if you give the horse some hay, at some point maybe the 
sparrows will have something to eat.''
  We ought to understand in this country that the American economic 
engine works best when all of the American people are working. The 
incentive in the minimum wage is to try to be fair to those at the 
bottom of the economic ladder. And it is not fair to say after 6 years, 
6 years of freezing you, because you lose purchasing power year after 
year, that we are going to continue to do that. That is not fair. And 
it is not fair to those on the minimum wage that our Tax Code on tax 
day contains a provision that says, ``By the way, the job you aspire 
to''--you are on minimum wage, but you aspire to a better job, a 
manufacturing job perhaps--``is gone, because in our Tax Code we paid 
somebody to take it out of America.'' That is not fair either.
  There are provisions, it seems to me, that we can and ought to agree 
on as Democrats and as Republicans that represent a fair economic 
approach which would benefit this country, all people of this country, 
even those who do not have the capability of sending an army of special 
interest folks to surround this Chamber as we debate their favorite 
issue.
  Mr. President, we will have a great deal of discussion on these 
issues this week, I am certain, and my hope is that we will, on the 
first question I asked today, answer with reasonable unanimity: Should 
there be a minimum wage? I hope most Members of this Chamber will 
answer yes.
  And if they answer yes, then let us spend the rest of the time asking 
the question: If there should be a minimum wage, then what is a fair 
level for that minimum wage? Is it fair having it frozen for 6 years? 
When the top of the economic ladder gets a 23 percent pay increase to 
an average $3 million a year, is it fair then to say to the bottom, at 
the lowest rung of the economic ladder, ``By the way, we will freeze 
your pay for 6 years?'' I do not think that is the answer most people 
would come to if you think about it reasonably and you think about it 
in the context of what would be best for the millions of people in this 
country at the bottom who are struggling very hard to make ends meet.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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