Again, Republicans Block Murphy on Buy America

Press Release

Yesterday, by a narrow vote of 212-208, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives blocked Rep. Chris Murphy's "American Jobs Matter Act," which would allow the government to gather job creation information and consider that information in contracting decisions.

"This is simple: the Department of Defense should give preference to American manufacturers when awarding contracts," Murphy said. "Most people assume we already consider US job creation when we hand over our defense dollars to contractors: we don't. And it's beyond my comprehension why Republicans keep blocking my common sense attempts to target taxpayer dollars to American companies."

While travelling throughout Connecticut and visiting manufacturers of all sizes, Murphy continually hears about unfair competition from overseas. He listens as people tell him countless stories of work being lost to foreign companies. Murphy responded to these concerns with a number of proposals to help stimulate manufacturing in America and has been working to enact those proposals into law. The "American Jobs Matter Act" is part of that effort.

The legislation, HR 1435, gives manufacturers the opportunity to provide information to the Defense Department regarding how their bid for a contract will affect domestic employment. The potential contractor would list on their bid the number of jobs created or retained if the bid is awarded. The bill would then allow the Defense Department to take this "Jobs Impact Statement" into consideration when deciding between different bidders.

This is not the first time this year Murphy has brought this legislation to the House. On April 13th he offered this bill with his colleagues on the floor of the House, but it was defeated on a party-line procedural vote. Yesterday's vote came about when Murphy re-cast the bill into an Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, the annual bill that sets the policy parameters for all defense spending. The Amendment was supported by only 25 House Republicans, and failed by 4 votes.

"This is a good debate to have because it highlights who is on the side of American workers and manufacturers and who is not," Murphy added. "This is the closest we have ever come to passing Buy America reform, and I am going to keep fighting for it."

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