With regard to the proposal to provide credits to corporations for hiring new employees (or as you note the even more difficult proposal to provide companies with credits for each employee they do not lay off), it seems a better proposal would be to expand the existing Section 199 deduction. Section 199, the domestic production activities deduction, allows a deduction equal to 9% of a company's income from domestic production activities in 2009, subject to limitations based on wages. It is equivalent to a 3% credit (roughly) against the corporate income tax for income from domestic production and manufacturing activities. Why not just increase this deduction so that it is equivalent to, say, a 10% credit against the corporate income tax? Mechanically, this would translate into a deduction equal to 30% of a company's income from domestic production activities. If limited to 50% of domestic payroll as under current law, this creates a relatively significant subsidy for domestic labor, and helps to offset some of the benefits of shipping jobs overseas. It also reduces the corporate tax rate for domestic corporations and does not appear to have triggered any protests in the WTO. Robert Ricketts