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WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman, a co-sponsor of the Sense of the Senate resolution that would put the Senate on record opposing the President's policy of sending jobs abroad, made the following statement on the Senate floor today.
“For working families in the state of Connecticut and across the country, these are hard economic times. Millions have lost their jobs, and millions more fear they might lose theirs soon. Outsourcing American service jobs overseas, as the President’s economic advisors suggest, would only add to the unemployment rolls and to growing anxieties. What America needs is not a plan for creating jobs abroad, but a plan for creating jobs here at home.
“Nearly all sectors have been affected by the national economy's sluggish performance during the past three years, with job losses across the board. The manufacturing sector has been hit particularly hard. In the state of Connecticut, nearly 26,400 manufacturing jobs have been cut in the past 38 months, and 33,500 since January 2001. Most of these jobs have gone overseas.
“In addition to manufacturing job loss, services and high-tech jobs are also being sourced outside the United States - to lower cost, lower wage countries. The employment trends in this sector are harder to quantify, but the impact is no less real. They threaten to put U.S. technological competitiveness and future economic growth at risk.
“The Bush Administration has done next to nothing to stop this hemorrhaging - relying instead on factory photo-ops, toothless trade missions and new organizational charts. The latest comments from President Bush's top economic advisers that ‘the outsourcing of U.S. service jobs to workers overseas is good for the nation's economy’ only underscores the Administration’s lack of understanding and leadership on this issue.
“Instead of policies that shift jobs overseas, we need to create jobs in this country. We need to strengthen enforcement of trade agreements; provide tax credits to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States; promote innovation through federal research and development policy; leverage federal purchasing power; create tax incentives for investments in manufacturing modernization and expansion; and strengthen manufacturing and services workers' skills.
“Today I join my Senate colleagues in sponsoring a resolution that tells President Bush loud and clear - we will oppose efforts to encourage the outsourcing of American jobs overseas and instead provide a manufacturing tax incentive to encourage job creation in the United States.”
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