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Medtech Issues in the 2012 Election Year |
The Bring Jobs Home Act would give companies that return jobs to the United States from overseas a tax break to cover 20% of their insourcing expenses.
If you’re located in one of the battleground states for November’s election, you’ve probably seen at least one advertisement accusing presidential hopeful Mitt Romney of outsourcing American jobs overseas. Recently, the war of words between President Obama and his Republican rival escalated into an attack on offshoring itself.
In July, Senate Democrats tried to advance a bill intended to curb overseas outsourcing and bring jobs back to the United States. The Bring Jobs Home Act would give companies that return jobs to the United States from overseas a tax break to cover 20% of their insourcing expenses. To pay for that tax cut, it would end deductions for outsourcing expenses currently available to companies that move jobs overseas.
The bill, which was sponsored by Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), never came to a vote. Democrats were four votes shy of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. Four Republicans, including medtech-friendly senator Scott Brown (R-MA), broke ranks with their party to join Democrats’ attempt to force a vote on the measure.
Republicans filibustered the measure because senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) refused to consider Republican-proposed amendments to the bill, including a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and an extension of tax cuts passed during the term of former president George W. Bush.
The bill is in line with President Obama’s goal of rewarding American jobs instead of outsourcing, which was among the five to-do list items he presented to Congress back in May. After the measure failed to come to a vote, White House press secretary Jay Carney criticized Republicans for blocking it.
“Rather than encouraging companies to bring jobs back to our shores, they chose to play politics and block measures that will create jobs and strengthen the middle class,” Carney said in a statement. “We will continue to push Congress to act on proposals like this one and the other remaining portions of the President’s American Jobs Act that independent economists say would create a million new American Jobs.”
Two similar bills exist in the House, as well as another in the Senate.
—Jamie Hartford is the associate editor of MD+DI. Follow her on Twitter @readMED.
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Too Little, Too Late
Yes this bill (S3364) failed cloture, and it does demonstrate the total lack of care for the American worker by the Democrats as they were the ones that killed it.
But the bill would still fall short of providing any meaningfull tax breaks significant enough to influence American Managements' decision to bring mfg back to the United States. A one time tax deduction for only 20% of the move costs with a maximum value cap. It does not reduce taxes imposed on operating costs for following years making the move unsustainable and not cost effective.
Too little, too late.
Doing What's Right for the Country and the Medtech Industry
To paraphrase Abba Eban, the Congress never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
For the Republicans, by voting unanimously for it, the power of the Democrats bringing it forward would have completely dissipated. And the Democratics too, knowing that the Republican amendments would have lost, by bringing the topic of outsourcing to full light, something finally might have been done about an issue that affects the future well-being of the Country and the medtech industry as a whole.
Both parties' strategies lack any depth to solve problems, and, going back to Civics 101, the American people need to refocus much, much more on Congress than the Presidential race.
Paul Stein