[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 91 (Thursday, June 23, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4100-S4101]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WHITEHOUSE:
  S. 1271. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1968 to provide 
a temporary credit for hiring previously unemployed workers; to the 
Committee on finance.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, with the unemployment rate hovering 
above 9 percent nationwide, and at almost 11 percent in my home State 
of Rhode Island, job creation must continue to be our No. 1 priority as 
lawmakers.
  It disappoints me that Republicans chose politics over job creation 
yesterday when they filibustered legislation that would have 
reauthorized the Economic Development Administration, an agency 
dedicated to restoring economically distressed regions to prosperity. 
In the past, this bill has been reauthorized and supported broadly, 
indeed, by unanimous consent. It is the fourth jobs bill the minority 
has chosen to obstruct, and I hope my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle will reconsider their tactics. If not, we may have to 
reconsider ours and force some votes on job creation measures without 
this litany of irrelevant amendments that have bogged down and 
obstructed the previous jobs bill we have tried to get action on. Out-
of-work Americans are hurting right now, and they want us to act to 
help create jobs.
  I rise today to introduce a measure that will do just that. I have 
heard from dozens of Rhode Island business owners that business is 
picking up a bit, but they are still concerned the recovery may be 
temporary and that discourages them from hiring additional workers. I 
spoke with one such small business owner on Monday. I visited Dona 
Vincent during a tour of her Cranston, RI company, Tedco. Tedco makes 
and stamps metal components for the automotive, aerospace, and 
communications industry. It employed 13 people before the recession 
struck in 2008. Now it is down to eight employees. Dona and Ted's co-
general manager Barbara Galonio wishes to start hiring more workers, 
but they worry that business could slow down again. They told me they 
have been waiting to hire, wanting to hire, and for months saying to 
themselves: Well, what if this? What if that? They have been on the 
border of hiring.
  The legislation I have introduced today, the Job Creation Tax Credit 
Act of 2011, would give Dona and thousands of other business owners 
nationwide greater security as they look forward to building their 
workforces. The bill would provide refundable tax credits for employers 
to hire new workers now. The way it would work is that for each 
qualified hire made in 2011, the business would receive a tax credit 
equal to 15 percent of the wages paid to the new employee. If the new 
employee remains employed or if the business were to hire additional 
employees in 2012, the business would be eligible for a 10-percent tax 
credit on those employees' wages next year. Because these tax credits 
would be refundable, businesses would benefit from them even if they 
are not currently profitable.
  One of the problems with struggling businesses that are not sure how 
much profit they are going to make if they are right on the edge is 
giving them a tax credit doesn't help because they have no tax against 
which to take the credit. A refundable tax credit comes to the business 
in spite of that. The higher credit in 2011 I expect would encourage 
employers to hire new workers as soon as possible, and the additional 
credit in 2012 would encourage retaining those employees and additional 
workforce expansion. To help those Americans who are struggling to find 
work, qualified hires would be defined as new employees who have been 
unemployed for at least 60 days prior to getting hired.

[[Page S4101]]

  The Job Creation Tax Credit Act would continue the job creations 
sparked by the HIRE Act of 2010 which included somewhat different tax 
incentives for new hiring. Economist Mark Zandi has estimated that the 
HIRE Act created 250,000 new jobs, a quarter of a million families with 
a paycheck coming in. The larger financial incentives in this new bill 
would continue to dent the unemployment numbers in Rhode Island and 
nationwide.
  The previous HIRE Act, sponsored by Senator Schumer and Senator 
Hatch, received wide bipartisan support, and I hope my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle will support the Job Creation Tax Credit Act as 
well because right now we cannot forget that too many unemployed 
Americans are hurting. Too many are out of work. Too many are out of 
work through no fault of their own. Indeed, too many of them are still 
out of work because of the cascade of misery that washed across this 
country from the Wall Street meltdown. There may be a lot of blame to 
go around on that, but none of it attaches to the workers who got 
caught in that cascade of misery. Of course, too many families are 
struggling to make ends meet week to week. We must continue fighting 
for them by using every tool at our disposal, including these new tax 
incentives, to get our economy moving and to help businesses start 
hiring.
  Again, this is a bill with a proven successful strategy, that has 
been approved by this body in the past, that has had bipartisan support 
in the past, and that addresses the most important issue facing our 
country right now, and that is putting people back to work, rekindling 
our economy, and getting folks into jobs.
                                 ______