U.S. Senator Chris Murphy hopes for a strong vote in the Senate this week on the Bring Jobs Home Act. The bill would take away the ability for businesses to get a tax break for sending jobs overseas, and instead incentivizes companies to bring jobs back to the United States.
"The current trend line is that more jobs are actually coming back to the States from abroad for a whole host of reasons."
Sen. Chris Murphy
"Right now, when you shift jobs overseas, you have a lot of moving expenses that are associated with moving those jobs out of the country," Murphy said. "We would end the ability to deduct that as a business expense, but then we’d substitute it with a credit for up 20 percent of the cost associated with bringing jobs back to the United States."
The proposal has been part of President Obama’s budget for the past three years. Murphy said opponents of the idea have opposed anything that would make it harder for companies to move jobs overseas, because historically, that’s how they’ve padded their profits.
"I think that misunderstands the current trend line," Murphy said. "The current trend line is that more jobs are actually coming back to the States from abroad for a whole host of reasons."
Murphy said the business community today would be better off shifting U.S. tax incentives from outsourcing to "insourcing." He hopes for both Republican and Democratic support for the bill, as taxes would neither increase nor decrease.
Listen below to Senator Murphy's conversation with WNPR's Diane Orson:
