Scott Walker may seem to have got religion in suddenly announcing that outsourcing Wisconsin jobs is a bad idea, but his fellow Republicans, both in the state legislature and nationally? No sign of a similar flip-flop. Give them a backhanded wave for being consistently wrong-headed on this.
Today in the US Senate a majority of members including all Democrats favored moving to a vote on a bill that would close a loophole to end corporate tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. But the bill stalled, because a minority composed of Republican senators, including Wisconsin accountant/businessman Ron Johnson, filibustered the motion. And so the latest Democratic effort to disincentivize private-sector job outsourcing came to a dead halt thanks to Republicans.
Result: Corporations will still get tax breaks paid for by you and me, even though they are busy outsourcing jobs --like yours and mine, to places including India and China.
Who's got our back on this issue? Democrats including Wisconsin's other senator, Tammy Baldwin, who voted to advance the Bring Jobs Home Act that she co-sponsored.
Hey, it's bad enough that the GOP is down good with firms offshoring American jobs. And it's bad enough that they're collecting fat campaign donations from some of those businesses -- Walker included. But here's a little advice to the Republican Party: Rewarding that behavior by giving such businesses tax credits is just plain wrong. It's an insult to hard-working Americans, and others who are still looking for a job. And if there's any electoral justice, your party will pay en masse at the ballot box for supporting this wrong-headed policy.
Oh, and note: Republicans can't say the bill is anti-business, because it also would have shifted existing tax credits over to firms that brought jobs TO the USA. Message: Republicans may love tax breaks, and they may be positively hot for corporate tax breaks, but the party's regulars could care less about American jobs. So why should you care about THEIR jobs?
Do you think the supposedly reformed Scott Walker will ring up Ron Johnson and urge him to reconsider his latest bad vote on this issue? I don't think so, either.
