March 31—President George W. Bush continues to support billions in new tax breaks for U.S. corporations’ overseas operations. Last year, Bush proposed new tax breaks to export jobs in his budget. Now he’s supporting foreign tax breaks in legislation before Congress. As Bush lobbies for the new tax breaks, a new survey of 182 companies shows nearly 86 percent of U.S. firms that are exporting U.S. jobs plan to outsource more jobs in the near future, according to a March 26 report by Reuters on a poll by the management consulting firm Diamondcluster International.
Bush is supporting the $37 billion in tax breaks for U.S. firms’ offshore operations as part of Senate legislation S. 1637 that would also replace a domestic tax break for exporters found to be illegal by the World Trade Organization with a new domestic tax benefit for manufacturing. While the manufacturing tax benefit standing alone would create an incentive to keep and create jobs in the United States, the new foreign tax breaks in S. 1637 will encourage companies to export more jobs. Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) will offer an amendment to strip out the $37 billion in new foreign tax breaks.
Faulty Tax Policies Backed by Bush Encourage Corporations to Export U.S. Jobs
The Diamondcluster survey also found that more than 80 percent of the respondents were concerned that political pressure or legislation could slow their outsourcing efforts. The same day the survey was released, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry unveiled a jobs and economy proposal that calls for the elimination of U.S. tax breaks that encourage companies to move jobs offshore.
Faulty trade and tax policies supported by the Bush administration make it profitable to send U.S. jobs abroad and have encouraged many employers to ship jobs overseas. Nearly 3 million jobs have disappeared since Bush took office, including some 2.8 million manufacturing jobs.
14 Million White-Collar Jobs Could Be Exported Overseas in the Years Ahead
In addition, as many as 14 million white-collar jobs could be lost to offshore outsourcing in the years ahead, according to a 2003 study by the University of California at Berkeley. In mid-March, Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to India, where many U.S. white-collar jobs have migrated, to reassure Indian leaders the Bush administration will not try to halt outsourcing of high-technology jobs to that country, according to The New York Times.
In a recent interview with the The Cincinnati Enquirer, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow praised the exporting of U.S. jobs as beneficial for the U.S. economy and gave a slap in the face to U.S. workers: “You can outsource a lot of activities and get them done just as well at a lower cost,” he said.
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