Anonymous
White House: Job Loss Criticism 'Laughable'
Fri Feb 13 10:05:41 2004
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http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228#1
ECONOMY
White House: Job Loss Criticism 'Laughable'

AP reports, "besieged by questions about his National Guard record and intelligence failures in Iraq," President Bush is making his 25th visit to Pennsylvania since 2000 to trumpet the economy. Bush will discuss "ways to create jobs, a sensitive issue in this year's election with more than 8 million Americans unemployed." But as a new American Progress backgrounder shows, the President faces serious questions about why his Administration has so aggressively put the economic interests of his biggest financial donors ahead of the interests of average Americans. On everything from shipping U.S. jobs overseas, to stripping worker protections, to rewarding companies for reducing health benefits for their employees, the Bush Administration has racked up a spectacular record of exacerbating the already difficult economic challenges Americans are facing.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS OUTSOURCING A "GOOD THING": In Pennsylvania, working families will be waiting to hear whether President Bush reiterates his announcement this week of support for shipping more U.S. jobs overseas. As CNN noted, "this is not just one aide to the president" who supports shipping U.S. jobs overseas. "The president signed this document and it's a very strong statement supporting outsourcing."

CALLING FOR SOMEONE'S HEAD: The President's top economist, Greg Mankiw, defended the report and the practice of shipping U.S. jobs overseas, saying the practice was a "good thing" for Americans. He set off a firestorm of criticism on Capitol Hill and throughout the nation from those who think the White House should not be encouraging more job losses when millions are already unemployed. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), normally a White House ally, "joined Democrats in taking issue" with the White House, saying its "theory fails a basic test of real economics. An economy suffers when jobs disappear." Asked about the criticism, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Administration stands fully behind the report. When pressed about the problem of job losses, he changed the subject, saying only "we certainly don't want to do anything that would undermine free trade."

WHITE HOUSE CALLS CRITICISM "LAUGHABLE": Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL) said the White House should fire Mankiw to show that it doesn't support job outsourcing. McClellan, not even throwing a bone to workers struggling with downsizing and outsourcing, said that idea was "laughable" and that Mankiw was "doing a great job." On CNN, Lou Dobbs said "Scott McClellan is just simply wrong. It's not laughable, because a lot of critics on Capitol Hill are certainly not laughing, including the speaker of the House." Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) chimed in: "All I can say is, `Mr. President, what planet are you living on?' Americans want and need good jobs to support their families not in Asia or Europe or Latin America or Mars." If you want a real laugh about outsourcing, check out today's American Progress cartoon.

BACKGROUND ON THE BACKGROUNDER: The American Progress backgrounder traces the most serious policies the Bush Administration has implemented which have exacerbated the recession for millions of workers. From sponsoring conferences that encourage companies to move offshore, to weakening pension protections, to overruling Pennsylvania's senior Republican Senator and cutting off 8 million workers from overtime pay, the Administration has aggressively backed its biggest financial benefactors to the detriment of average Americans.

EDUCATION QUESTIONS IN PENNSYLVANIA: The President is also slated to address education in Harrisburg today. The question is: will he explain why he has so severely underfunded his own education bill? A new study by the Pennsylvania State Education Association "reveals that federal assistance to Pennsylvania schools have fallen far short of what was promised in" the President's No Child Left Behind Bill. Specifically, the White House has proposed to give Pennsylvania "$290.5 million less than what was promised to Pennsylvania" for Title I aid for disadvantaged students. The funding gap deprived over 181,000 disadvantaged children in Pennsylvania from Title I aid, left behind over 26,000 English language learners, and prevented Pennsylvania school districts from hiring an additional 574 teachers to reduce class sizes. The gap also leaves behind more than 102,000 Pennsylvania preschool-age children from a fully funded Head Start program."

LACK OF FEDERAL AID TO PENNSYLVANIA: On the eve of the President's visit, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, whose proposed 3.4% increase in state mass transit funding would be the largest in a decade, criticized the Bush Administration yesterday for "trying to amend a 13-year-old transportation funding act to make it tougher for states and individual transit systems to secure funding for capital expenditures like subway tunnels and new buses." If the Bush administration gets its way, requiring transit authorities to pay a higher matching amount to acquire federal funds for new expansion projects, it "would be the death knell for mass transit in this country," Rendell said.