The Obama campaign is hard at work painting Romney's time at Bain Capital as one big outsourcing party (somewhat inaccurately, as it turns out), with ads like this one airing in nine states:
But while the campaign goes negative on Romney's past, a bill is scheduled for a vote that could deter outsourcing in the future. Part of Obama's To-Do List announced last January, the Bring Jobs Home Act closes tax loopholes that perversely rewarded businesses for sending jobs overseas by allowing the companies to deduct moving expenses. Via the Congressional Research Service, the bill would
(1) grant business taxpayers a tax credit for up to 20% of insourcing expenses incurred for eliminating a business located outside the United States and relocating it within the United States, and
(2) deny a tax deduction for outsourcing expenses incurred in relocating a U.S. business outside the United States. Requires an increase in the taxpayer's employment of full-time employees in the United States in order to claim the tax credit for insourcing expenses.
Obama announced the initiative six months ago, and in early May, Representative Bill Prascell (D-Turnpike) and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-I'm just gonna stand here and let my opponent reelect me with racist ads), introduced the bills into their chambers. Stabenow's proposed legislation could come up for a vote as early as next week.
While the Obama campaign's ads attacking Romney's Bain time are a little light on substance, an actual piece of legislation makes the issue of outsourcing real. The bill pays for the tax credit to insourcing businesses by closing the tax loophole to outsourcing businesses. Closing loopholes, as one in three Grovers will tell you, is a tax hike, and Romney has promised to reduce taxes on corporations, not raise them. If Romney supports this, it's a tax increase; if he goes against it, he shows his hand as someone who values profits over patriotism.
If the taxes do even each other out, making for no net tax increase (and if I read Norquist's tax pledge quickly correctly, I think closing tax loopholes is cool if it's met with corresponding spending decreases), then Romney will end up endorsing Obama's bill, giving a win to the man he wants to show as an incompetent steward of the economy.
Romney has yet to come out for or against the bill, as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will happily tell you:
I would ask Mitt Romney, "Do you support his bill or don’t you?" His companies were the pioneers of this outsourcing and now he says he's against it. This is a chance for him to prove it, so he can say "I'm for this bill" or "I'm against the bill." And that'll tell the American public a lot. (via Politico)
Derek Losey :
The whole FactCheck/Politifact/Glenn Kessler approach to covering the campaign has its uses, but one of the limitations is that it often blurs the difference between standard-issue political rhetoric and brazen, obvious distortion of the facts. Right now, the Obama campaign is casting undisputed facts of Romney’s records (Bain assets created jobs overseas and also cut jobs in the U.S.) in a very negative light (it created foreign jobs at the cost of the U.S. economy.) http://politi.co/MElnma
July 6, 2012
Chas Holman:
President Obama - Millions of people are giving him hundreds of dollars to get elected.
Governor Romney - Hundreds of people are giving him millions of dollars to get elected.
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