YOUNGSTOWN Ryan, other reps back bill to increase manufacturing jobs
The Valley congressman said the bill could help keep jobs in the country.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Concerned about the decline of the nation's manufacturing sector and the resulting job losses, Congressman Tim Ryan is campaigning for a House Bill that would reward companies for creating and keeping manufacturing jobs here.
Ryan, of Niles, D-17th, is one of 144 legislators cosponsoring the bill known as the Job Protection Act of 2003. Discussing the measure at a news conference in downtown Youngstown on Friday, he said it's one way to strengthen the nation's floundering manufacturing sector.
The Valley congressman co-founded a Manufacturing Caucus in Washington this summer with a goal of finding and supporting bipartisan legislation that will strengthen manufacturing in the United States and will have a likelihood of passing. He said the Job Protection Act fits those criteria.
"I think this is one piece of legislation which has a chance of getting a full hearing because of what's happening to manufacturing in this country," Ryan said, citing statistics that show the nation has lost 2.6 million industrial jobs over the past 25 months.
Tax breaks
The first part of the bipartisan bill would repeal tax credits of 10 to 15 percent now in place that benefit companies that export goods.
The World Trade Organization has determined that the tax breaks are illegal because they subsidize exports, Ryan said, so Congress has no choice but to repeal them. European nations have threatened to impose a $4 billion in punitive tariffs on U.S. goods if the tax breaks are not removed by Jan. 1.
In exchange, the Job Protection Act proposes reducing companies' corporate tax rate by up to 3 1/2 points if they have 100 percent of their manufacturing in the United States. The corporate tax rate now is 35 percent, so a company with all its manufacturing in the United States would see its rate drop to 31 1/2 percent.
Companies with some domestic manufacturing and some in other countries would receive a lesser tax break, based on a sliding scale tied to its percentage of production in the United States.
Larger incentive
There is a similar, competing proposal in the Senate, he said, but it gives an equal tax break to any manufacturer with 50 percent or more of its production in the United States. He thinks companies that make the commitment to have more manufacturing here deserve a larger incentive.
Ryan said the effort to preserve domestic manufacturing is "picking up steam," but he's concerned about businesses turning to cheap foreign labor as a way to cut costs because it means devastating job losses.
"China is basically cleaning our clock in the United States as far as investment in manufacturing, and they're just sucking the manufacturing jobs away from us," he said. "One because they have no labor standards, one because they have no health standards, one because they have no environmental standards."
vinarsky@vindy.com