A Political Exercise

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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.

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.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source