Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly released the following statement on today’s layoff of 215 Carrier workers in Indianapolis and highlighted the missed opportunity to address outsourcing through the recently-passed partisan tax bill. In 2017, more than 300 workers at the Carrier Indianapolis plant lost their jobs and 350 workers at Rexnord were laid off when operations were moved to Mexico.

Donnelly said, “The only thing more outrageous than the fact that hundreds of Hoosier workers are losing their jobs to outsourcing is that Congress has refused to address the problem through the recently passed tax bill. Not only does the new tax law continue to force taxpayers to subsidize the cost of moving jobs out of the country, it creates new incentives for corporations to move more American jobs to foreign countries in order to pay a lower tax rate.”

Donnelly introduced the End Outsourcing Act in January 2017, has discussed the legislation with President Trump on numerous occasions, who was supportive of the effort, with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, and with Federal Reserve Chair Yellen. In October 2017, the Senate agreed with Donnelly in affirming that companies that ship American jobs to foreign countries shouldn’t get tax breaks, though no substantive provisions were included in the recently enacted tax bill. Donnelly pushed for reforms to the tax code to include policies to address outsourcing. One of the reasons Donnelly said he could not support the bill is that it fails to crack down on corporations that outsource jobs to foreign countries and does nothing to claw back tax breaks and incentives awarded to corporations that outsource American jobs. Further, the tax law does not close loopholes that allow companies to write off moving expenses for sending jobs to foreign countries.

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