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[Dan Smith <anilorac AT nc.rr.com>]

I thought this was worth a forward.  Now we know the Bush is really talking from both sides of his mouth about jobs.  He is SO concerned about jobs, his economic report to Congress endorses shipping jobs overseas.   From today's LA Times.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/whitehouse/la-na-bushecon10feb10,1,5131610.story?coll=la-news-politics-white_house 

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Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas 
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The loss of work to other countries, while painful in the short term, will enrich the economy eventually, his report to Congress says.

By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen
Times Staff Writers

February 10 2004

WASHINGTON — The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar
work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will
enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain
and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.


The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has
contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue
in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to
Congress on the health of the economy.

 "Outsourcing is just a
new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman
of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report.
"More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a
good thing."

 The report, which predicts that the nation will
reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in
2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight
signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic
stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign,
and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are
producing results.

 In his message to Congress on Monday, Bush
said the economy "is strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to
his tax cuts and other economic programs. He said the nation had
survived a stock market meltdown, recession, terrorist attacks,
corporate scandals and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was finally
beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner
of America."

 The president repeated that message during an
afternoon discussion about the economy at SRC Automotive, an
engine-rebuilding plant in Springfield, Mo., where he lashed out at
lawmakers who oppose making his tax cuts permanent.

 "When they
say, 'We're going to repeal Bush's tax cuts,' that means they're going
to raise your taxes, and that's wrong. And that's bad economics," he
said.

 Democrats who want Bush's job were quick to challenge his claims.


Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the
Democratic presidential nomination, supports a rollback of Bush's tax
cuts for the wealthiest Americans and backs the creation of tax
incentives for companies that keep jobs in the United States. However,
he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which many union
members say is responsible for the migration of U.S. jobs, particularly
in the auto industry, to Mexico.

 Campaigning Monday in Roanoke, Va., Kerry questioned the credibility of the administration's job-creation forecast.


"I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who
brought us the intelligence on Iraq," Kerry said. "I don't think we
need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new
president who's going to create jobs in America and put Americans back
to work." 

 In an evening appearance at George Mason University
in Fairfax, Va., Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina mocked the Bush
administration's economic report. 

 Edwards, who also supports
repealing tax cuts for the richest Americans and offering incentives to
corporations that create new jobs in the United States, said it would
come as a "news bulletin" to the American people that the economy was
improving and that the outsourcing of jobs was good for America.

 "These people," he said of the Bush administration, "what planet do they live on? They are so out of touch."


The president's 411-page report contains a detailed diagnosis of the
forces the White House says are contributing to America's economic
slowdown and a wide-ranging defense of the policies Bush has pursued to
combat it.

 It asserts that the last recession actually began in
late 2000, before the president took office, instead of March 2001, as
certified by the official recession-dating panel of the National Bureau
of Economic Research.

 Much of the report repeats the administration's previous economic prescriptions.

 For instance, it says the Bush tax cuts must be made permanent to have their full effect on the economy.


Social Security also must be restructured to let workers put part of
their retirement funds in private accounts, the report argues. Doing so
could add nearly $5 trillion to the national debt by 2036, the
president's advisors note, but the additional borrowing would be repaid
20 years later and the program's long-term health would be more secure.


The report devotes an entire chapter to an issue that has become
increasingly troublesome for the administration: the loss of 2.8
million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office, and critics' claims
that his trade policies are partly to blame.

 His advisors
acknowledge that international trade and foreign outsourcing have
contributed to the job slump. But the report argues that technological
progress and rising productivity — the ability to produce more goods
with fewer workers — have played a bigger role than the flight of
production to China and other low-wage countries.

 Although
trade expansion inevitably hurts some domestic workers, the benefits
eventually will outweigh the costs as Americans are able to buy cheaper
goods and services and as new jobs are created in growing sectors of
the economy, the report said.

 The president's report endorses
the relatively new phenomenon of outsourcing high-end, white-collar
work to India and other countries, a trend that has stirred concern
within such affected occupations as computer programming and medical
diagnostics.

 "Maybe we will outsource a few radiologists,"
Mankiw told reporters. "What does that mean? Well, maybe the next
generation of doctors will train fewer radiologists and will train more
general practitioners or surgeons…. Maybe we've learned that we don't
have a comparative advantage in radiologists."

 Government
should try to salve the short-term disruption by helping displaced
workers obtain the training they need to enter new fields, such as
healthcare, Mankiw said, not by erecting protectionist barriers on
behalf of vulnerable industries or professions. "The market is the best
determinant of where the jobs should be," he said.

 Bush's quick
visit to Missouri — his 15th to a state considered a critical election
battleground — was the first of several events this week intended to
underscore recent economic gains. Although U.S. job creation remains
relatively sluggish, the nation's unemployment rate fell from 6.4% in
June to 5.6% in January, and the economy grew at the fastest pace in 20
years during the last half of 2003.

 The format of his visit to
SRC Automotive — one that he particularly likes — involved several
employees and local business owners sharing the stage with the
president to discuss their perspectives on the economy, with Bush
elaborating on their stories to emphasize particular aspects of his
economic program.

 Today, Bush is scheduled to meet with
economic leaders at the White House. On Thursday, he goes to
Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg — in another swing state that he has
already visited more than two dozen times since becoming president.

 *

 

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Vieth reported from Washington and Chen from Springfield. Times staff writers Scott Martelle in Norfolk, Va., and Maria L. La Ganga in Roanoke, Va., contributed to this report.

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