Outsoure this
Dionne, E. J. Jr.
OUTSOURCE THIS Unemployment & the presidential race enator John Edwards (D-N.C.), who has had perfect rhetorical pitch in this year's presidential campaign, altered the opening of his stump speech...
...Indeed...
...He knows his night is over when he gives her a hug," Edwards said, speaking on the stump in Milwaukee...
...only 12 percent said trade created more jobs...
...The people in charge, he says, "don't hear the other America...
...But tonight when he comes home, he'll be coming home to tell her that his factory is closing, that he's about to lose his job...
...But for the moment, they are hearing only bromides...
...It's not because he's done anything wrong," Ed-wards says of this father...
...They don't see the face of this father who had to come home and tell his little girlthat he no longer had a job...
...The problem is they're going to make it somewhere else," Edwards says...
...They're going to make it somewhere outside of his community, outside of his country...
...The mythical but very real dad in Edwards's story wants better answers—from both par-ties...
...On February 10, a group of nineteen Democratic senators, led by New York's Charles E. Schumer and including Edwards, called on Bush to repudiate the report...
...In a separate letter to the president, Edwards asked: "Would it be a 'good thing' if the current members of the Council of Economic Advisers saw their jobs outsourced SCHWADRONto economists elsewhere in America who better understand the need to save good jobs...
...One facet of increased services trade is the increased use of offshore outsourcing in which a company relocates labor-intensive service industry functions to another country," the report says dryly, italicizing the key phrase...
...Among Virginia primary voters, the comparable figures were 55 percent and 19 percent...
...Why, for example, should there be free trade in jobs and manufacturing but an absolute ban on importing prescription drugs from Canada or Australia...
...Nor is the factory closing because the company has decided to stop making its product...
...They were sending their kids to college so they could get good jobs that are now being shipped abroad...
...DIONNE Jr...
...I can already hear free traders sigh...
...Makes sense to whom...
...In the long run, they will say, free trade benefits everyone...
...He's been responsible, he's worked hard, he's raised his family...
...In Tennessee, 71 per-cent of the voters said that "U.S trade with other countries" took more jobs from the state...
...They only care about profits, they have lobbyists everywhere, and they own this White House...
...There's rebellion in the country, a justified revolt by workers who cannot understand why the economic recovery has produced so few new jobs for Americans...
...He's offering a morality tale about a decent American hammered by the system...
...We need to offer an expansive enough opportunity agenda to make the trade bargain worthwhile," he said...
...It's worth hearing Edwards to under-stand the power of this issue...
...Now, contrast Edwards's evocative language with the cold words of the new Economic Report of the President and you'll understand why even Re-publicans such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert are furious at President George W. Bush's economists...
...But not to worry: "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad," the re-port of the president lectures, "it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically...
...Workers who fear for their cur-rent jobs want to hear where they can find their next one...
...who has had perfect rhetorical pitch in this year's presidential campaign, altered the opening of his stump speech in the week leading up to the February 17 Wisconsin primary...
...2004, Washington Post Writers Group ~U5 DEPT...
...Democratic front-runner John Kerry knows this as well as Edwards does, which is why Kerry keeps attacking "Benedict Arnold" companies that move jobs overseas...
...Part of the problem is with the contradictions free traders refuse to confront...
...Why...
...But in the long run, as the great economist John Maynard Keynes once said, we are all dead...
...Edwards, with his lawyer's gift for creating compelling narratives, told the tale of a father coming home from his factory job to put his daughter to bed...
...Commonweal 7 February 27, 2004...
...The outsourcing of service and white-collar jobs, says Robert Borosage, co-director of the prolabor Campaign for America's Future, "has outraged not only the well-educated middle class, but also working-class parents...
...He's not telling an economic story...
...He has a right to be angry...
...But at least some free traders acknowledge the larger problem: that displaced workers need more than "palliatives," as Bruce Reed, president of the strongly free-trade Democratic Leadership Council, put it...
...of 015iNFCRNATION E.J...
...Consider the exit polls for the February 10 primaries...
...The change should be a warning to free traders: Guys, you'd better wake up...
...Edwards closes his case...
...In the short run, the growing prosperity gap between investors and employees is fundamentally altering the American landscape on trade questions...
...He's done what he's supposed to do...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 4
