[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7441-7442]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BRINGING IT HOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, according to a report produced by the 
Urban Land Institute, the United States has been conspicuously 
underfunding infrastructure spending for the past 30 years. The report 
estimates that there is at least $2 trillion in funding needed just to 
rebuild and repair our crumbling infrastructure and our aging networks 
that are operating well beyond their planned life cycles. These systems 
include roads and bridges, waterlines and treatment plants, dams and 
tunnels, and mass transit that serve our Nation's vital economic 
centers. But we just have not had the political will to face the 
problem, we have not had the funds available to fix the problem, and we 
have not even had a bipartisan consensus that there is a problem.
  While at the same time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News, 
U.S. companies have stockpiled approximately $1.2 trillion overseas in 
untaxed profits. As things stand now, that is money that is not likely 
to be brought back to the United States because large corporations find 
that it's far more profitable to just leave the money where it is and 
borrow any cash they need back home. There is just no economic 
incentive for them to repatriate the money. So we need some fresh ideas 
about how we can create incentives for corporations to bring home some 
of that $2 trillion and put it to work, helping to put more Americans 
back to work.
  Our Republican colleagues have proposed another tax holiday for 
repatriating offshore profits, similar to the one they crafted back in 
2004. Back in 2004, companies that brought back profits earned abroad 
were taxed at roughly 5 percent instead of the top 35 percent corporate 
rate. They were also obligated to use the money they saved on taxes to 
create new jobs.
  But there were a number of problems with that 2004 program, the 
biggest one being that it didn't work to create jobs. In fact, it did 
the opposite.
  The program brought corporate profits home all right, but according 
to a report prepared by the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations last year, the 15 companies that 
benefited the most from the 2004 tax break actually cut a net of 2,000 
jobs between 2004 and 2007. The companies also decreased the pace of 
their spending on research and development. But the top 15 repatriating 
companies did accelerate their spending on some things, such as stock 
buybacks and executive compensation. Those are not exactly the kinds of 
results we were looking for in that program.
  Democrats, on the other hand, have suggested an infrastructure bank 
with

[[Page 7442]]

$60 billion in seed money from the Federal Government, but our 
Republican friends have let us know that that is not going to happen.
  The good folks over at Citizens for Tax Justice have suggested a 
totally different approach to dealing with all of that money sitting 
overseas. They suggest that the best approach is to flat out repeal the 
tax rule that indefinitely exempts offshore profits from United States 
corporate income tax. But I can simply look across the aisle at the 
faces of any of my Republican colleagues when I even say something like 
that out loud, and I know very well that the chance of that proposal 
becoming law is probably at zero.
  So let's try something a little bit different, something with a 
little bipartisan flavor to it, something that just might actually 
work.
  What if we took the incentive idea of a tax holiday for repatriated 
profits and tied it into helping to fix the infrastructure problem? 
Let's tell corporations that they will get the tax break they want if 
they bring that overseas money home. It will be taxed at just 5 percent 
instead of the full corporate rate of 35 percent, but all of the money 
that they save on the taxes on those profits will need to be invested 
in municipal bonds that are tied to approved infrastructure projects in 
our States, our cities, and rural areas across America. The bonds would 
typically be issued for terms of 50 years, paying 4 percent interest, 
and taxable to the corporations. There would also need to be a minimum 
holding period, perhaps 5 years before they could sell those bonds. For 
instance, Corporation X can save $10 million in taxes, but then it must 
put that $10 million to work putting Americans back to work rebuilding 
our highways and repairing our schools and bridges.
  Think of the virtuous cycle this creates. The corporate money comes 
home from overseas. The corporation knows the tax ramifications with 
total certainty. Their profits are then safely invested in municipal 
bonds, which are then used to tax and fix our infrastructure, which 
then creates jobs that can't be sent overseas.

                              {time}  1320

  Those newly hired people will pay taxes on their wages and increase 
their spending on products and services, creating more jobs, and on and 
on and on. It is the road to a bipartisan recovery, thanks to a 
bipartisan solution.
  Let's face it, Americans are tired of our squabbling. They are tired 
of our inaction. They are tired of the politics of division. Let's stop 
this ``all or nothing,'' this ``my way or the highway'' approach, and 
let's just fix the infrastructure of our country. Let's bring that 
money home. Let's put it to work here at home where it belongs.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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