[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 44 (Thursday, April 1, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3520-S3521]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  JOBS

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I will be making my comments on leader 
time. We will have the hour of morning business as laid out in the 
unanimous consent for our side so people can plan their morning. My 
remarks will only be about 10 minutes or so.
  Mr. President, I want to take a moment to comment on the Democrats' 
decision last week to filibuster the JOBS Act, the FSC/ETI and the 
Jumpstart JOBS bill. It is a bill that goes right at the heart of 
manufacturing job creation in this country. It is critical to our 
manufacturing jobs base. As has been pointed out again and again, it 
was developed in a strong, bipartisan fashion under the leadership of 
the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee. It is 
critically important. It has broad support, yet every Senate Democrat 
except Senator Miller from Georgia voted to sustain the Democrat-led 
filibuster.
  Since that time we tried to work out some sort of agreement so we 
could consider this bill and have debate on germane amendments, but 
every time we attempt to do so we are met with an increasing list of 
irrelevant, mainly political message amendments that the other side 
insists be a part of this bill. Last week a filibuster was open on the 
floor. This week, in a less obvious way, it continued by foot dragging.

  What does a filibuster mean? What are the practical implications of 
this filibuster? It means leaving in place a Euro tax the European 
Union began imposing on March 1 last month against the U.S. 
manufacturers. The Europeans have been authorized by the WTO to impose 
$4 billion in sanctions that began March 1--30 days ago. The tariff 
started at 5 percent of the $4 billion authorized and will increase 1 
percent on the first of every month thereafter.
  Thus, in supporting this filibuster, whether it is the active 
filibuster last week or the more passive filibuster of this week, the 
Democrats are supporting the sanctions. Again, today being April 1st, 
it will kick up another 1 percent, another $40 million increase, in 
those sanctions because of the delay.
  If the other side of the aisle is not in favor of this JOBS bill, 
then what do they support? Let me look at some of the legislation that 
has been introduced and statements made in the Senate. As of late, a 
lot has been made about outsourcing--a lot of conversation, a lot of 
proposed amendments--regarding the whole issue of offshoring. Time and 
again, the Senate Democrats have introduced amendments, bills, and 
statements expressing grave concern over this issue.
  The conversation has, unfortunately, been quite one-sided. When we 
look at the numbers--and increasingly people are looking at the 
numbers--we learn foreigners outsource far more work to the United 
States than American companies actually send abroad.
  Indeed, the value of insourcing, what is coming into the United 
States--including legal work, computer programming, banking, 
telecommunications, engineering, management consulting, other private 
services--was $133 billion in 2003. Outsourcing of such private 
services was valued at $77 billion and $133 billion for insourcing.
  When measuring outsourcing to insourcing, the United States posted a 
$54 billion surplus last year in trade and private services with the 
rest of the world. Again, look at both sides of the equation.
  Far from being bad for the economy as a whole, this balance of 
offshoring and insourcing creates a net additional value for the United 
States economy, lowering prices to consumers who are making purchases 
and, in effect, increasing their standard of living. Each dollar of 
cost that is outsourced creates $1.46 of value globally. Of that $1.46, 
the United States captures $1.13 and the receiving country captures the 
33 cents.
  These numbers suggest, by the way I have described it, that efforts 
to restrict outsourcing will backfire by provoking a retaliation which 
is detrimental to our economy and our trading partners.
  Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan captured the gist in these 
words on this issue: These alleged cures would make matters worse, 
rather than better. They would do little to create jobs. And if 
foreigners were to retaliate, we would surely lose jobs.
  Where would the jobs be lost? Everywhere. The Census Bureau says in 
the year 2000, 6.4 million Americans were employed in jobs that were 
insourced by foreign companies operating in the United States. Mr. 
President, 223,000 of the jobs were in Massachusetts; 246,000 were in 
Michigan. Washington State had 104,000. Pennsylvania had 281,000. My 
home State of Tennessee had almost 149,000 insourced jobs, but that is 
less than half of the 307,000 jobs in Florida and well behind the 
259,000 in Ohio.

  When we talk about outsourcing, we need to remember there is another 
side of the equation, a side representing 6.4 million jobs. We cannot 
lose sight of that.
  While we all agree the loss of any job to outsourcing is regrettable, 
we need to focus on the training, retraining, and education. If we look 
at the solutions offered by our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, we find them to be surprising and startling.
  Senator Kerry has introduced S. 1873, requiring operators at call 
centers to disclose their physical location. Senator Kerry described 
this bill as being necessary to ``address the growing problem of United 
States corporations moving hundreds of thousands of service sector jobs 
abroad.''
  I have to admit Senator Kerry's premise strikes me as a bit unusual. 
It

[[Page S3521]]

seems there should be some sort of assumption that if Americans 
discovered a foreigner was on the other end of that telephone, they 
would either hang up the telephone or otherwise lodge some sort of 
protest upon hearing that foreigner was in another country. The only 
way this bill would save jobs is if we assume Americans are so 
violently xenophobic we do not and would not tolerate even this modest 
level of international agreement.
  Senator Kerry's legislation is indicative of the choice we face as a 
country. We can choose the path of freedom, where every individual and 
every company can do as he or she sees fit and trust that people are 
going to work hard on their own behalf, and in doing so promote the 
common good or we can choose a path of more Government, more Government 
mandates with less freedom, with less prosperity, and fewer jobs, one 
in which every time you call a company to see if they have an item in 
stock, the Federal Government will force you and the company to 
identify the exact longitude and latitude of the operator who is on the 
other end of that telephone call.
  The reality is we compete today in a global economy. We cannot close 
our borders to the world. Some think we can retreat into economic 
isolationism, but we simply cannot. Times are different. We shouldn't. 
That, in many ways, given our world economy, would be a declaration of 
defeat.
  We are the most innovative society in the world today. Our workers 
lead all others in the world in productivity. If we are allowed to 
compete on a fair playing field, United States manufacturers can and 
indeed will lead the world.
  We had a chance last week to help U.S. manufacturers by repealing the 
Euro tax on our U.S. manufacturers. Unfortunately, we were met by 
obstruction on the other side. While I was disappointed at this 
outcome, recent history indicates that should not have been much of a 
surprise. If there has been one thing consistent over the last several 
months, it has been the Democrats' steadfast refusal toward legislation 
that would help reduce the cost of manufacturing in the United States. 
Every time we attempt to move legislation forward that addresses the 
concerns of manufacturing, we have been met by obstruction. With class 
action, with energy, with medical liability, to Workforce Investment 
Act, we have been blocked. It is either by filibuster or by objections 
going to conference.
  Next month we are going to be addressing issues that I hope will 
bring some fairness and justice to certain challenges that we have 
today.
  I have pointed out that we would like to address the issue of 
asbestos litigation reform. I look forward to hopefully being able to 
address that in a bipartisan way.
  The loss of a few hundred thousand jobs per year to offshoring is a 
small part of the constant pace of job creation and destruction that 
goes on in the U.S. labor market. We need to address dislocation. We 
can do that with aggressive education and training.
  But it is precisely because each job loss is painful that we need to 
focus on ways to stimulate employment generally rather than focusing on 
legislation to address a tiny percent of the population.
  In closing, we need to keep our focus on proposals that look to the 
future to help companies create and keep new jobs. We cannot be focused 
on the past but really the present. We need to be looking ahead all the 
time.
  As Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan stated earlier this 
month:

       Time and again through our history, we have discovered that 
     attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the 
     present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, 
     is a sure path to stagnation.

  We only need to look across the Atlantic to see the results of those 
policies of stagnation. Instead, Republicans will keep working for 
policies of growth and for innovation to help America compete and win 
in the 21st century.
  I yield the floor.

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