[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16641-16642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          A POLITICAL EXERCISE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the American people have been 
speaking out for a year and a half. They have wanted Democrats in 
Washington to focus on the economy and on jobs. What they got instead 
was a budget that explodes the national debt, a $1 trillion stimulus 
that failed to hold unemployment down to the levels we were told it 
would, a health spending bill that is already leading to higher costs, 
and a raft of other bills that expand Washington's role in people's 
lives.
  With just 3 days left in the Democrat's 2-year experiment in expanded 
government, they want to make a good last impression with a bill 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. 
In my view, it is an insult to the millions of Americans who want us to 
focus on jobs.
  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. In the last 3 days of the session, they have 
decided they can at least pretend to be concerned. This is nothing 
short of patronizing. But in some ways it is the perfect way to end a 
session in which the American people have taken a backseat to the 
Democrats' big government agenda.
  As for the specifics of this bill, even if this were a serious 
exercise, it is a bad idea. Even the Democratic chairman of the Finance 
Committee said this bill could hurt American competitiveness. 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 is 
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 is that simple.
  Moreover, the companies this bill targets, by and large, are not 
opening overseas subsidiaries to make products for Americans. They are 
moving overseas to serve foreign markets in addition to the markets 
they already have in place, and that creates jobs right here in the 
United States. When these additional markets overseas are opened, it 
creates jobs right here in the United States.

[[Page 16642]]

  This bill is not a serious attempt to address a problem. It is a 
purely political exercise aimed at making a good impression. 
Unfortunately for Democrats, the impression they have made over the 
past year and a half has stuck--and for good reason.

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