Surprise! Those "out of touch" Democrats have been touting a policy for years that Trump is "100 percent for"

WASHINGTON ― So-Called President Trump liked the sound of a Democratic bill that would punish companies for offshoring jobs, according to a senator who met with the president at the White House on Thursday.

The proposal from three Rust Belt Democrats would put companies at a disadvantage in bids for federal contacts if they’ve laid off workers and shifted production overseas. Bill co-sponsor Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) pitched it to Trump at a meeting the president held with several senators.

“He said, ‘I get it, I’m 100 percent for this type of legislation and let’s see if we can get going on it,’” Donnelly told The Huffington Post.

Of course, Trump has been known to say things he doesn’t really mean. And White House spokespeople declined to comment on Donnelly’s description of his conversation with the president. But if a Republican president supported the proposal, it would be significant. For years, Democrats have introduced similar bills designed partly to stop companies from offshoring jobs ― and especially to shame Republicans who vote no.

“It’s always been a message bill in the past,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an advocacy group funded by steel companies and the United Steelworkers union.

“It’s also fair to say that the playing field may have shifted a little bit,” Paul said. “You have a president who at least says he objects to these practices.”

During the campaign, Trump objected strongly to firms laying off workers and building plants in other countries. He frequently bashed Carrier, an air-conditioner manufacturer that had planned to shutter an Indiana factory and shift production to Mexico. After he won the election last November, Trump successfully bullied the company into changing its plans.

Though Carrier received modest tax breaks for keeping the plant open, a bigger factor may have been that its parent company, United Technologies, is a big government contractor that didn’t want to risk angering the president. The firm’s CEO partly explained the deal by saying “about 10 percent off our revenue comes from the U.S. government.”

Donnelly’s legislation, co-sponsored with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), would essentially subject every government contractor to the same kind of pressure Carrier got. Firms that have laid off large numbers of workers and moved production abroad would be put on a public list and have points subtracted from their bids for federal contracts. It’s not clear how many jobs such a policy might save, but there’s big money involved. The Department of Defense spends nearly $300 billion a year on contracts.

The Senate on Tuesday decisively rejected a bill that Democrats said would have restricted the ability of U.S. companies to send jobs overseas.

Members voted 53-45 for the legislation, seven short of the 60 votes need to break a Republican filibuster. Forty GOP senators voted against the bill, along with four Democrats and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.).

The four Democrats who crossed the aisle to oppose the bill were Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Warner of Virginia. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) were not present for the vote.

The failure of the legislation was expected; mindful of the likely defections from within their party, Democratic leaders were privately acknowledging defeat on Monday.

Democrats used the vote to portray Republicans as insensitive to the needs of American workers.

“The bill we tried to pass today is based on simple common sense: to keep American jobs here in America, we should stop forcing taxpayers in Nevada and across the nation to pay for giveaways that reward companies for sending American jobs overseas,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

“But Republicans continued their job-killing agenda today by protecting these tax breaks for CEOs who offshore American jobs and preserving the same failed Republican policies that cost 8 million Americans their jobs,” Reid said.

Earlier in the week, Republicans also blocked the Disclose Act, which would have required the disclosure of campaign contributions of more than $10,000.

Republicans were considering supporting the insourcing bill until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he wouldn't include any GOP amendments.

“At a time when millions of Americans are looking for work, I’m not sure what could be more serious than protecting good-paying, middle-class jobs,” Reid said. “This obstruction tactic is unfortunate, but it’s not surprising. After all, Republicans’ nominee for president made a fortune working for a company that shipped jobs overseas.”

The Bring Jobs Home Act would have created a new tax credit for companies that spend money to bring overseas jobs back to the United States, and eliminate a tax credit for companies that spend money to move jobs overseas.

Under current law, companies can deduct the cost of moving people and equipment overseas from their taxes. S. 3364 would have eliminated that deduction, and created a new 20 percent tax credit for all costs associated with moving overseas jobs back to America.

There are no provisions in the tax code that specifically reward companies for offshoring. But companies can take deductions for business expenses, including the cost of moving jobs to another country.

Obama included eliminating that deduction in his budgets for fiscal years 2015, 2016 and 2017, and Congressional Democrats have introduced several bills that include the idea. None of these got any traction in the Republican-controlled chambers.

Republicans and tax experts characterized one version of the legislation as political posturing, intended to help elect Democrats. (Here are two examples of attack ads Democrats have aired hammering their opponents on the vote.)