Via CNN:

Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the No.1 item on the president’s congressional “to-do-list,” refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks for companies that “insource” jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad.

[…]

The Bring Jobs Home Act would provide a 20% tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the United States and would rescind business expense deductions available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had warned Democrats before the vote that his party would want to amend the bill — possibly with hot-button issues like repealing the health care reform law or extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, responded that those amendments were not germane to the bill and he would not allow votes on them.

Actually, the GOP’s main objection to the bill was that it did not include any tax breaks for investing in banks in the Cayman Islands, that it had no provisions for mandatory vaginal probes for pregnant women, and that it did not voice support for the Boy Scouts continuing to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Other than that, they would have let it pass.