Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren was one of several speakers at the Democratic National Convention to emphasize outsourcing to Americans as a key to economic prosperity.
Between former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s rundown on education reform in his state, and both Delaware Lieutenant Governor Sher Valenzuela and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) making heartfelt connections to families of children born with disabilities, it’s likely that the Republican National Convention more directly addressed these individuals that its Democratic party counterparts did a week later. But several key speakers in Charlotte, North Carolina, hit on the issue of insourcing, which could lead to more employment opportunities for people with disabilities here in America.
Both our own Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley set the tone with opening-night speeches that characterized the Democratic party’s plan to create more American jobs as investments. Each played his assigned role of attack dog with zeal.
Governor O’Malley was more overt in his attack on the GOP with regards to outsourcing when he said, “Instead of investing in America, they hide their money in Swiss bank accounts and ship our jobs to China!” While almost everyone would agree that Governor Patrick’s impassioned presentation was the more memorable, fact-checkers like Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post called Patrick out on his assertion that the state ranked 47th in job creation under Mitt Romney’s leadership. It’s an unfortunate bit of partisan posturing since Governor Patrick can certainly be proud of his own efforts to stimulate economic development here in the state.
The following night came the highly anticipated speech from another Massachusetts politician, Elizabeth Warren. She is attempting to use her reputation for protecting consumers from predatory corporate practices as a springboard to win Scott Brown’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Much of her speech was geared toward extending that credential toward the plight of the small business owner:
But for many years now, our middle class has been chipped, squeezed, and hammered… Talk to the head of a manufacturing company in Franklin trying to protect jobs but worried about rising costs… Anyone here have a problem with that? Well I do. I talk to small business owners all across Massachusetts. Not one of them — not one — made big bucks from the risky Wall Street bets that brought down our economy.
When it was President Barack Obama’s turn on Thursday, he wasted little time launching into the Outsourcing to Americans talking point. The president has put an emphasis on job creation in the manufacturing sector since his State of the Union address back in January. The Washington Post fact-checkers confirmed the truth of the President’s claim that more than half a million manufacturing jobs have been created in the past two and half years, and he is banking on these types of jobs leading to growth in other sectors of the economy:
We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we’re getting back to basics and doing what America’s always done best. We are making things again.I worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products — because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.
President Obama says he wants to continue encouraging states like Georgia and Tennessee to enact laws that attract manufacturing operations back to American shores. Back in February, he proposed a corporate tax reform plan that would establish a new minimum tax on foreign earnings. These plans will not lead to a resurgence of large factory operations, but it can mean more work for smaller, specialized firms to handle different aspects of supply chain logistics.
This is where, under the democratic party plan, companies that work with contract labor service organizations, which provide individuals with disabilities jobs doing the same light assembly, packaging, and fulfillment duties typically sent offshore, are in the best position to take advantage of these opportunities to outsource to Americans while still maintaining a high level of profitability. It would be interesting to hear any counter-examples of how the GOP plan would make life matter for people with disabilities. Please share in the comments section below.
Image by mdfriendofhillary (Edward Kimmel).