This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've heard out of a Republican in a while and that's saying a lot given the amount of lies that come out of most of their mouths most of the time their lips are moving. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl appeared on Meet the Press this Sunday and actually tried to blame outsourcing by corporations on taxes, regulation and "Obamacare" when asked about the dust up over Mitt Romney's outsourcing at Bain Capital.

It's pretty bad when even hack David Gregory has to point out that it's pretty hard to be blaming "Obamacare" or the Affordable Care Act for companies shipping jobs overseas since the practice has been going on for decades now. The truth of the matter is companies ship jobs overseas for cheap labor for one reason and that's to maximize profits. It's not for any concern for American citizens or the American economy. And because they're rewarded and not punished by our tax laws for doing so, we're not going to see the practice stop until our laws are changed.

Democrats have been trying to get Republicans to actually do something about this problem as Sen. Dick Durbin pointed out in his reply to Kyl's nonsense. Sen. Debbie Stabenow has introduced legislation that would "eliminate tax breaks allowing companies to deduct expenses associated with moving operations overseas, while still encouraging them to assist displaced workers. It also would provide a tax credit to corporations that bring jobs back to the United States."

So far the response from Republicans has been for John Boehner to refuse to allow it to come to the floor for a vote in the House and we're looking at the Senate voting on the bill later this month. Naturally when Durbin was trying to elicit a response from Kyl on whether the Republicans in the Senate would vote for the bill or not, David Gregory managed to change the subject so he had no chance for follow up with him.

Instead Kyl was allowed to spout his "we can't raise taxes on the job creators" nonsense with Gregory leaving him unchallenged on their B.S. talking point as well. For once I'd like someone to ask Kyl and his ilk why, if cutting taxes supposedly created jobs, we weren't at full employment while Bush was in office, or given his latest ridiculous argument here, why we didn't see outsourcing under Bush end or at least be reduced as well. If we had an actual journalist instead of a Republican water carrier hosting this show, we wouldn't even see the likes of Kyl show up as a guest, because it would not take a whole lot of follow up to make him look extremely foolish with the arguments he was trying to make here.

Transcript below the fold.

GREGORY: All right, we’ll get to taxes in a minute. But Senator Kyl, weigh in on this Bain issue. You heard Ed Gillespie here saying that he was effectively-- though, he was on a leave of absence to run the Olympics, what do you think of your-- your colleague’s thoughts on this?

KYL: Well, I think Ed Gillespie is right. If you look at the fact checkers, I look at The Washington Post. They say Obama is blowing smoke. They give him three Pinocchios. In other words, he-- he is fibbing. He’s misrepresenting the facts about Bain Capital. I think the important point that people are missing here is the final point that Ed Gillespie made. And that is that the reason that businesses find that they have to find employees in other states or even sometimes in other countries to do their work is that this administration is making it so hard to do business in the United States, and be competitive that they’ve got to do that.

GREGORY: But let-- but-- but let’s be real about this. Companies began to outsource well before Barack Obama became President of the United States.

SEN. KYL: That’s… that’s very true.

GREGORY: Do you consider it a legitimate business practice that should not be politicized?

KYL: When-- let’s-- let’s look at the symptom versus the cause. The symptom of the problem is outsourcing. The cause is when the government taxes businesses too much, when it regulates businesses too much, and when it creates too much uncertainty as with things like Obamacare. The outsourcing is accelerated because of those things. And speaking of the Olympics, it’s a-- a little bit like the president saying all right, I want to get out there and compete you runners and beat all the other countries, but in the meantime, wear this big anchor around your neck, which is the taxes and the regulation, as-- as Gillespie pointed out. We have the highest tax rate of all of the industrialized countries. That makes us very uncompetitive.

GREGORY: Are you speaking about the Olympics? Are you concerned about our athletes wearing uniforms that were made in China?

KYL: Again, I go back to-- let’s don’t politicize the Olympics. Let’s look at why an American business felt it had to buy those products because they were cheaper than the ones he could make here. It’s because of government policies here that make it more expensive to do business in the United States.

GREGORY: So you’re okay with-- with Ralph Lauren doing with the…

KYL: I’m-- I’m not going to politicize it. I want to talk about the issue. The underlying issue is why do we make it so hard for American businesses to compete that they have to buy things from abroad?

GREGORY: Senator, go ahead.

DURBIN: David, let me tell you, what-- the bottom line is this. The outsourcing of jobs by Bain Capital to low-wage countries is an embarrassment to Mitt Romney and he’s trying to distance himself from his own company that made millions of dollars for him. I would say to Senator Kyl, I hope that this week the Senate Republicans will join the Democrats in supporting the measure that Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio will offer that eliminates the incentive, the tax incentive, that we have to outsource jobs and rewards American companies for bringing jobs back to America. It would be great to see the Republicans join us in a bipartisan effort to create a tax incentive to bring jobs home. Instead, they’re making excuses. Now, I have to say that Mister Gillespie and my friend, Jon Kyl, have failed to answer your question. Outsourcing, unfortunately, costs good American jobs. We need a president focusing on creating jobs in America, not a former governor whose company specialized in exporting jobs overseas.

KYL: And I-- I-- I do agree we need a president that’s focused on creating jobs in America. And you don’t do that by increasing taxes on the very people…

GREGORY: All right. Well let’s talk…

KYL: …to create jobs.

GREGORY: I want-- I want to talk about taxes because what-- what the Senate Democrats would like to do, what the president would like to do is extend the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $200,000, or $250,000, as a family and then taxes would go up on people above that.