American Techno-Politics

U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D) Supports Outsourcing to India

UPDATE: According to Baucus's office, AP has issued a minor correction. The news service says that Baucus "did not say he supports outsourcing of white collar jobs from the United States, but said instead that outsourcing is a reality."

I just discovered this in another blog and felt that it would not be responsible if I didn't alert readers to this. I have not been contacted by the Senator's office as of yet but I would welcome their statement on this.

My original blog is below.

Original Blog:
According to the Associated Press, Senator Baucus supports offshoring American technology jobs to India. Apparently he was influenced by Thomas Friedman's book because he was quoted as saying "But the world is flat and we must work harder to better retrain our people".

Apparently the Senator believes that technology professionals should throw in the towel and enter other fields. What would he say to those in debt to their eyeballs because they pursued a degree in a field that the US Senate sold to India? Go further in debt? Quit your career and become what?

The Senator, and most politicians for that matter, don't care about our economy -meaning the working class. If they did we wouldn't be running record trade deficits, and they wouldn't be pretending to be powerless over the situation.

They are very concerned, however, about their economy. The economy that sends jobs to India and makes CEOs even wealthier. This is the economy driven by corporate interests and powerful lobbyists like Harris Miller, for example.

I can't imagine any self-respecting Democrat voting for a person who supports sending American jobs offshore. There is no evidence suggesting that sending high paying and high skilled jobs away is a good thing. They made that argument with NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with regards to manufacturing -and just look at what a sorry state American manufacturing is in today. You must look very hard on the shelves of Wal-Mart for anything made in the USA.

Do we want the IT field to follow the path of manufacturing? Is it in the interest of the United States that these jobs vanish? Max Baucus is unable to make any compelling argument in support of offshoring. He digs up misconceptions produced by the ITAA, that have been proven baseless time and again.

The trade policy of this nation is nothing short of wreckless. But what do we expect from politicians who listen to lobbyists and not their constituents? This government has become so infested with corruption we no longer know who to trust. I won't be satisfied until corruption is purged from the Congress and the executive branch of our government. Until then, we are stuck with those who would sit on their hands while our jobs are shipped offshore. And I must assume that some lobbyist made a back office deal with Senator Baucus at our expense.

"But he is a Senator. He has stature and respect that in itself demands our trust", you say. Nonsense. Trust is something that Congress must earn. Until they can prove that they have integrity and do something about the corruption within, they get no confidence or trust from me.

posted by R. Lawson @ 10:53 AM