Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. It is not free, and it adds tremendously to the cost of others as well. So the implications, in addition to laying someone off--as we see now the thousands of jobs that have gone--the Senator from Montana is very accurate in pointing this out when looking at this issue. Here we are taking Federal taxpayer money. That is what my amendment addresses. It says: With Federal taxpayer money you can lay someone off and hire someone else and pay them basically with Federal dollars. So we are, in a sense, not only causing that person to lose their job in this country but also their health care benefits and other benefits they may have, not to mention what it does to a family. Talk about keeping families together, the single largest reason why families break up is economics. Every study in the world that has been done on that institution says it is economics. As a matter of Federal policy, in effect we are saying we are going to outsource these jobs, causing a great disruption in America and families' lives. The Senator from Montana is so right to point out that the health care implications, because we have not yet sorted this out, are huge. Again, I come back to the point, I do not accept it, I do not like it, but if someone on their dime wants to lay someone off and hire someone else, I do not like it and I wish I could do something about it and I certainly want to support measures that I know of the Senator from Montana and the Senator from California, such as giving tax incentives to encourage people to stay here, but when someone does it with Uncle Sam's nickel, with the taxpayers' money, then I say, no. I have some control over that. I am offering an amendment today that says when it comes to U.S. taxpayer money, you are not going to lay somebody off and hire somebody else 12 time zones away to do the job. You may do it on your dime but not on their dime. I will mention one other subject matter that I know my colleague from Montana and my colleague from California care about, and that is privacy. That is one of the things we have not talked about at all on this issue. I pointed out earlier--I apologize to my colleague from California because she cannot see this chart, but I was talking earlier about where these jobs are going, from what sectors of our economy they are coming from, the 14 million additional jobs in danger of being shipped overseas. One of the areas we are talking about is in the area of medical, diagnostic and medical services. This covers a little more than almost 300,000 jobs in that area. We all know what is happening. Today, with information technology, x- rays can be transmitted at the speed of light or faster.

Mr. DODD. There were 272,000 jobs lost.

Mr. DODD. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Montana. He is absolutely correct. I did not even get into the issue of what happens here. Obviously, when you fire someone, lay someone off, you hire someone offshore to do the job, there is absolutely no requirement that the fired or laid-off worker is necessarily going to be able to get any kind of health care coverage from the former employer. Even when you have retired with full benefits there is no guarantee, as we learned through the discussion of the Medicare bill that was before us only a few months ago. So in addition to the lost jobs and wages--that is all I have been talking about today--there are benefits that are incredible, and when people lose those benefits it adds to the roles of the 44 million people in this country who have no health insurance. They get health care. It might be showing up in an emergency room, which increases the costs of everyone else who has health care, as we all know. Fortunately, in this country if people get sick they can show up someplace and get some kind of coverage.

Mr. DODD. We may be looking at a new era where it is not going to be just people in this Chamber calling for these kinds of things, but, in fact, people in these other countries are going to be insisting upon it as well.

Mr. DODD. Every time you try to stand up for an American job you are called an isolationist. There is a new coalition. They want to change the language, by the way. There was an article this morning that says, ``Business coalition rewrites lexicon for jobs outsourcing.'' They point out, they say the coalition is now rallying around ``worldwide sourcing'' as a less provocative term. I apologize for sounding provocative, but we didn't make this up. What ought to be provocative is the fact that people like my colleague from California have constituents who are losing their jobs because we are not doing enough to protect these jobs--not from a protectionist standpoint, but protect them when in fact there is no loss to be incurred as a result of standing up and saying we ought to be doing what we can to protect these positions in our country. I commend her for it. I thank you for raising it. It is an important point and I am glad our amendment covers it.

Mr. DODD. Let me say to my colleague I was not aware of it. I apologize for not being aware of it. I know agriculture is a huge industry in the State of California, particularly in the area of rice. It is significant. So I am pleased to know we are covering this kind of activity as well. Again, this is not being isolationist.

Mr. DODD. Absolutely. The whole point of these trading agreements, because we are a high value country, obviously, and we do not want to dumb down our system, we want to see improving quality products, you need to sell them to somebody. If the countries with whom you are entering trading agreements do not have a population that can afford to buy your higher value goods and services, then the trading arrangement is going to be all one way and not the other. So it is very much in our own interest, from a larger perspective, to be able to have it. Too often it is U.S. interests that are insisting that labor and environmental agreements not be included because they want to be able to enter those markets and hire people at those depressed wages and be able to operate plants that do not face environmental regulations. So they see it as advantageous for them. They then turn around and sell those goods back here. They are not thinking about an American corporation that wants to sell its quality product there. It is very shortsighted and, of course, it only leads to further encourage the outsourcing of jobs, which is exactly what is going on.

Mr. DODD. I say to my friend from Montana, it is as obvious as anything. These are the shelves--this is the marketplace you want to be. If you are any other country in the world, you want to be able to access the greatest consumer market in the history of mankind, which is the United States of America. This is the most inviolable place to which you can sale your services and your goods.

Mr. DODD. And they should be more concerned about it.

Mr. DODD. My colleague would be interested to know, in my conversations, very informally at this point, but I am finding a great deal of receptivity to the point the Senator from Montana is making; that, in fact, they should be insisting upon these points. The politics of their own countries are changing and they are insisting if you are going to enter these agreements, that this be a part of it as well.

Mr. DODD. My staff gave me some other information. I have mentioned others. Tax experts now say Indian-chartered accountants, the subcontinent version of certified professional accountants, will prepare somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 tax returns this year. That is up from 20,000 last year. I am not making up these numbers. The trend lines are moving at a very rapid pace. In this case here I am not suggesting these are necessarily being paid for with Federal tax dollars. I don't know that. If it is not, obviously we are not covering the situation and these firms that want to continue doing it unfortunately will be able to continue. But if they were doing it with Federal tax money, I say no, just as my colleague from California says no. If someone with their own dime wants to decide they are going to ship rice or whatever products and use someone else offshore, that is one thing. But when they are using taxpayer money to do that, that is when we have an obligation to stand up and say no.

Mr. DODD. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. DODD. My colleague from Nevada is in the Chamber. I didn't know if he wanted to speak.

Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague for those comments. They are very enlightening. It is further indication that these trend lines are moving forward. There has been a report in Time magazine that indicates we are looking at, some indicate over the coming years as many as 14 million, 15 million jobs to be outsourced if we do not begin to do something about it. In the near term, I think the number is between 3 and 4 million with a loss, by the way, just looking at revenue loss, of wages lost--forget everything else, forget what happens when a person loses their job and the ripple effects that occur--just in lost wages it is about $140 billion. We know what kind of budget deficit we are in already. I don't think this figure has been projected onto those numbers at all. We look at revenues coming in, and we look at what expenditures for which we have to account, and a loss of $136 billion to $140 billion in wages, lost because of outsourcing over the next decade or less, ought to be a matter of deep concern, even if you are not affected or moved by what happens to families or heads of households who are trying to provide for the needs of their families. The fact that we lose that much salary and wages going out ought to be of great concern. I mention that as an additional implication of what is caused by outsourcing. Again, I said earlier, we can offer incentives for people to stay, we can offer disincentives in the Tax Code for them not to go, but I don't know, for the life of me, why we ought to be taking American taxpayers' money--we insult the taxpayer to say, I am going to use your money to fire someone in this company and hire someone someplace else to do the job at a fraction of the cost because it is going to improve your bottom line. I don't know how the Senator feels, but the societal implications are profound. Our job is not only to make sure there is wealth creation in the country, but also we bear a responsibility beyond quarterly reports to see to it, from a generational standpoint, that we are going to leave this country at least as in good a shape as we inherited from our parents.

Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague from Montana, as well, for his comments. I think they are poignant. While we do not specifically address those issues, he is absolutely correct. It is another piece of this puzzle on which we need to do a far better job. I have had some recent discussions with ambassadors from some of the Latin American countries and have suggested to them they ought to start talking to us about having labor standards and environmental standards from their perspective.

Mr. DODD. If free and fair trade is to work well, it ought to be raising the quality of life and the level of wealth accumulation by people in these countries with whom we are about to enter into trading agreements. That is good for us, and it is good for them. Instead of us having to fight for it here, they ought to be fighting for it and insisting upon it on behalf of their own constituents.

Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague. It is worthwhile to make the point that actually watching the buying power, the wealth of individuals being reduced, overall our country suffers from that--obviously the families do--but when you reduce that buying power, that wealth, implications are being felt throughout our economy. These happen from a structural standpoint. But when you allow it to go on with Federal money being used--again, as I say, I would not be party, as much as I may object, to companies that want to do this. I think they are wrong to do it. They are making a mistake. It is harmful to our country. On their dime, I guess they have a right to do it. But on our dime, they ought not have the right to do it, and this is the American taxpayers' dime. I don't think we ought to be saying to them, You can take your Federal taxpayer money and pay somebody offshore to do it, losing an American job that could be done here. I don't think that is right, and that is the purpose of this amendment. I thank my colleague.

Mr. DODD. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, may I inquire what is the business before the Senate?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Coleman of Minnesota, Senator Kennedy, Senator Corzine, Senator Mikulski, and others. Let me say to the floor managers, if I may, I know they are interested in the time. I am prepared to agree to a 1-hour time agreement. I do not necessarily expect to take the hour. I know there are others who may want to be heard. I know you want to move things along, so I am prepared to have a time agreement and move on my amendment, give my remarks, and then others can speak, and then vote on it, if you would like.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I will move forward. If, at any moment you would like to have a time agreement, let me know and I will try to accommodate you so you can move on to other matters. I have already spoken about the amendment during the time between 2:30 and around 3:30, describing, in a sense, what the amendment would do and the rationale for the amendment. I will be glad to go back over this amendment again for my colleagues and then engage in any debate or discussion about it. In a sense, I am preaching to the choir when I talk about this issue to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle because we all painfully know what has happened in the last 36 months in our country. We have lost around 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. I have laid out on this chart I have in the Chamber how that breaks down State by State across the country. In my home State of Connecticut, we have lost some 32,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector; California, 272,000; Ohio has lost around 153,000 jobs; in Illinois, 115,000; Texas--the Presiding Officer's State-- 150,000 jobs. So certainly we all appreciate the fact there has been a tremendous erosion in a very critical area in our economy. We also know there is another phenomena occurring, and at an accelerated pace; that is, the outsourcing of many jobs, including some manufacturing jobs, around the globe, and it is accelerating at warp speed. We now know there are literally 400 of the top 1,000 companies in the United States outsourcing their jobs to India or China or other nations around the globe. Mr. President, 40 of the 50 States now outsource jobs. My amendment simply says--and there are waivers in here and the like. I understand, although I do not like it, if a company decides on its own dime it is going to outsource a job. I disagree with that. I think they are wrong to do it, but it certainly is their right to do it. We can offer tax incentives to encourage people to stay here, tax disincentives so they do not go offshore, but ultimately a company can decide for itself. It is another matter with taxpayer money, with the money that American taxpayers send to Washington. The idea that we would use their dollars to outsource an American job is something on which I think we ought to speak loudly and clearly. We ought to say: Look, we disagree with that. We don't think you ought to be able to do that. So this amendment, in three different areas, very simply says: First, the Federal Government may not use Federal taxpayer money to procure goods and services to fulfill contracts that use overseas workers at the expense of American jobs. Second, we tell State and local governments that any Federal dollars they receive in the form of a grant, in the form of an appropriation, or any other way, that they are not to use those Federal dollars to promote the loss of American jobs for the creation of offshore jobs. And, third, we say any agency seeking to privatize a Government contract being paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars may not enter into that contract if it, again, displaces American workers in favor of offshore workers. Now, very quickly, in anticipation of some of the arguments we may hear, we provide waivers and exceptions on grounds of national security, and we also allow Governors or Federal agency heads to waive these provisions if there is a bona fide lack of comparable goods or services in the United States. In this legislation, we also, of course, make it clear that the Government procurement agreements between the United States and some 27 other nations, that are predominantly Western Europe countries, are not affected by the prohibitions contained in this bill. Those 27 nations do not include, I would point out, India or the People's Republic of China. So the major sources of outsourcing are not affected by those provisions. Thus, we are in complete compliance with the WTO and every other formal agreement we have. We are not in violation of any of those agreements as a result of this amendment. Now, I had a meeting in my State--and I assume my colleagues may have had similar kinds of gatherings--where people came together who you could not have put in the same county a year ago on this issue. I am talking about my chambers of commerce, my manufacturing associations, and my labor unions--all coming together saying: When is Washington going to say something about this outsourcing that is going on? If we continue to allow these jobs to flow out of our country, then I think we run the risk, at critical junctures, of having the human talent necessary for us to provide those services and to produce those goods which will allow us to compete effectively in the 21st century. Once you lose jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector, or some of the high-skilled areas, it is very difficult to go back and re- create those jobs, to re-create those manufacturing centers. Let me point out an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this morning. In fact, I have already included it in the Record. But the ValiCert company--and I think this is a front-page story or nearly a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal--discovered that outsourcing was no great success for them. They did it and discovered that the value they were getting for the jobs and products being produced did not equal that produced here in the United States. They have reversed that decision. So when you read in this economic report, prepared for the President of the United States, last month, in February-- and I will quote the report for my colleagues where they state, in absolute terms, on page 229 of this report: When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically. Well, tell that to the ValiCert company. They did not discover that. Certainly, while that may be true of a bottom line of a company, if you are trying to preserve jobs in this country, which is a responsibility we bear in this body, and not just to those companies but to the people who work for them--an American job is not just a good or a service. An American job has implications that go beyond just the dollar amount lost of income in wages or salaries. It means also that a family may not pay their home mortgage and may not be able to provide the goods and services that allow our economy to grow and expand. It means families are under more strain and stress because they have lost the source of income to provide for themselves. So this ought not be a partisan issue. This ought to be something on which we stand united. This is not being an isolationist. I am a free trader. I have been so in the years I have been here. I have supported many, many free trade agreements, and I opposed some as well, but I honestly believe if you are going to be an effective trader, a free and fair trader in the 21st century, then you ought not squander and give up the very jobs that make it possible for you to compete in this global economy. So I am deeply concerned that if we do not say something, particularly with U.S. taxpayer money that is being used to subsidize this outsourcing of jobs, then we are failing to understand what is going on across this country. In State after State after State, the trend lines are there in manufacturing. It is also occurring in other sectors in the economy. Let me share with my colleagues, as shown on this chart, indication of where the outsourcing of these jobs is occurring. Presently, it is occurring in areas such as office support. The estimate is 14 million additional jobs, by the way, will be lost and shipped overseas over the next several years. The estimates are about 8 million will occur in office support areas; in computer and math professionals, close to 3 million jobs lost in that area; business and financial services, over 2 million jobs; paralegals, diagnostic support services, medical transcriptions, over 94,000. So it is not just low-wage, low-salary jobs that are going but very sophisticated, high-technology jobs that could be leaving our country as well. That makes us weaker. It is not in the national security interests of the United States to be losing these critical jobs at a time when we need them most in order to provide for the economic growth of our own Nation. So while I understand, from a business perspective, your job is to look at quarterly reports, to try to improve the bottom line, our job in the Senate and the Congress of the United States goes beyond looking at quarterly reports. We should look generationally. I don't want my generation to be the first generation of Americans which leaves the coming generation less well off than every other succeeding generation has left their children and their grandchildren. We are at risk of doing that if we don't step up at this juncture and say we need to stop or at least discourage this outsourcing of jobs that is occurring at a rapid pace every single day. It is hard not to pick up a U.S. newspaper in any city and read where one corporation, one business after another, is making the decision to outsource more jobs. I think we ought to say, let's slow down. Let's have some balance. Let's not use taxpayer money to allow these jobs to be lost. That is the thrust of the amendment. I hope we will have overwhelming support for this idea. This bill is an appropriate place to be debating it. It is something that could make a huge difference for those who are worrying whether we are paying attention at all. We have just debated over the last 5 weeks medical malpractice, providing immunization for gun manufacturers. We have had a bill on pensions. But we have not spent 5 minutes debating the issue of what is happening to America's jobs. That is the big issue. Look at any survey right now. Ask the American people what they worry about the most. It is the loss of jobs. They are outraged we have nothing to say when it comes to outsourcing of jobs to other nations, and we are not standing up and defending our own workforce. In this same economic report I cited earlier, to give you some idea of why people get discouraged, I mentioned earlier the quote suggesting it was an automatic thing that outsourcing of jobs was good or, as they call it, importing of jobs. That is the way they describe it. I mentioned already a company identified in a Wall Street Journal article this morning, ``Lesson in India, Not Every Job Translates Overseas.'' I encourage my colleagues to look at that article as one example of a company that discovered outsourcing was bad for business, not good. In this same economic report prepared by the President's top economic advisors, they raised the following question: The definition of a manufactured product, however, is not straightforward. When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a service or inputs for manufacturing a product? If this was some sort of cartoon in the paper, I might have laughed at it, but it is part of an official document, an economic report prepared by the President's top economic advisers which suggests through the question that flipping a hamburger or cooking a hot dog is a manufacturing job. You get some idea and sense of where the outrage of the American public is coming on why we are unable to speak to this issue. Again, I don't care if you are a Democrat or Republican, what your politics or ideology is. We have to stand up and defend our country in a moment like this. I worry about losing these jobs. I mentioned earlier I had some 5,400 manufacturers in my State employing well over 240,000 people. We have lost about 35,000 jobs in the last 36 months. My manufacturers produce critical components for some of the most sophisticated defense technologies in the Nation. If you lose that manufacturing base, it is not just the loss of a manufacturing job or the loss of a good little company, it is also a critical issue when it comes to national security needs. Many of these small manufacturers produce critical components and parts for some of the most sophisticated defense technologies in our Nation. I mentioned earlier my friend and colleague from Texas. The number of jobs there, 150,000. I know this Senator has many of these small companies that are producing those parts for defense companies, defense technologies. There is a ripple effect. We know as well, beyond the implications for our national security, for every one of these jobs that are lost in the manufacturing sector, there are jobs lost in other sectors. It is not just that job that is lost or that family that is affected. Each manufacturing job supports three other U.S. jobs. So when we lose these jobs, we also feel it in the retail trade, in the professional services, and in manufacturing as well. I apologize if I get heated about this subject, but it is painful to read some of this cold-eyed analysis that suggests somehow you just have to stomach this or weather this, that this is just one of these cyclical or structural occurrences in the national economy, and these statistics, as troublesome as they are, are nothing more than that, statistics. Behind every one of those statistics, behind every one of those numbers I cite, is usually a head of household or people trying to keep their families together. They are not just statistics. These are American citizens. These are human beings who are doing everything they can to live by the rules and provide for their families. They want to know whether their Congress--they don't identify themselves when they get up in the morning as a Democrat or Republican; they get up in the morning and worry about their families and their future--gets it, if we understand it, and whether we are willing to do anything about it. This is an attempt by myself and my colleague from Minnesota and others to say at least when it comes to your tax dollar, we are going to say to the States, localities, and other businesses with waiver provisions here, you are not going to use those dollars to outsource an American job, not on our watch. You may decide to do it with your own money, but you will not do it with American taxpayer money. That is why we offer this amendment. I yield the floor to my colleague from Minnesota for any comments he would like to make.

Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his support, and my colleague from Minnesota as well. My colleague from New Jersey is no stranger to these issues. I made note before of what is happening in Minnesota and other States. In Connecticut, we have lost 32,000 manufacturing jobs. New Jersey has lost over 55,000 manufacturing jobs.

Mr. DODD. I mentioned earlier there was an article in this morning's Wall Street Journal entitled ``Lesson in India: Not Every Job Translates Overseas.'' I want to ask my colleague a question. Because of his background in business, he understands those issues better than most of us. This reads: When sales of their security software slowed in 2001, executives at ValiCert Inc. began laying off engineers in Silicon Valley to hire replacements in India for $7,000 a year. It says: The reality was different. The Indian engineers, who knew little about ValiCert's software or how it was used, omitted features Americans considered intuitive. U.S. programmers, accustomed to quick chats over cubicle walls, spent months writing detailed instructions for overseas assignments, delaying new products. Fear and distrust thrived as ValiCert's finances deteriorated, and co-workers, 14 time zones apart, traded curt e-mails. In the fall 2002, executives brought back to the U.S. a key project that had been assigned to India, irritating many Indian employees. ``At times, we are thinking, `What have we done here?' '' recalls John Vigouroux, who joined ValiCert in July 2002 and became chief executive three months later. Tell me a bit about this. I think the assumption is made automatically, and certainly in this economic report prepared for the President by his administration, it makes a categorical statement that outsourcing of jobs is always a good thing because it improves the bottom line. Here is an example of a company which had a very different example. Aside from the obvious reduction in payroll by hiring people in another country to do the job, and firing Americans, are there also examples where this kind of activity has actually been bad for business and not necessarily automatically good for business, as suggested by this report?

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Secondly, on an unrelated matter, I was alarmed but not terribly surprised to pick up the morning newspapers and to read what I thought might happen. I did not wish it to happen, but I thought it might happen in the island nation of Haiti. Over the past weekend, I warned, as others did, if we did not step up and try to support a democratically elected government, albeit a flawed one but a democratically elected government, we would end up reaping what we sow. And we are doing just that. In the headlines this morning we read things such as: Haiti rebel says he is in charge and has taken over down there. The man's name is Guy Philippe. This is a person who has a dreadful human rights record. These are people who ran death squads and are involved in the drug trades. They are now taking over. Anarchy apparently is reigning in the island nation of Haiti. Parts of this article state the country is in my hands, this so- called rebel leader says. Although American officials denounced the armed rebels and said they should have no role in ruling Haiti, the American forces did not take any action to counter them at all. They have now taken over in that country and are apparently in charge down there. Anarchy is reigning. There are bodies in the streets of Port-au- Prince. What I feared might happen if we did not stand up and support a democratic government--and again I will say a flawed one, but when the United States decided we were going to put a foot in the back of this elected President and send him out of the country, we warned the vacuum would be filled by the worst elements. In fact, I read over last evening and this morning that Baby Doc Duvalier, the worst oppressive leader in that country, and his father, wants to come back to Haiti under this new operation that is going on down there. I am terribly disappointed the administration failed to step to the plate. I knew it was going to be difficult, but if we cannot support democratically elected governments--and again I will repeat, whatever problems Aristide had, they were not a few; they were many. Nonetheless, he was chosen by the people of that country on two different occasions, overwhelmingly so. If we are unwilling to stand and back democratically elected governments in this hemisphere and give a wink and a nod to those who replace governments that have been duly elected, we will see a repetition of what occurred in Haiti elsewhere. We are seeing it in Caracas, Venezuela, because we are endorsing the notion that when we don't like leaders in certain countries, we will ignore the chaos that can result from changing of government other than through the normal means of elected government. That is something that can happen, and it has happened. So I rise to express my deep disappointment that once again the administration, in this hemisphere, is just failing terribly, and Haiti is a classic example of failure. We now have a huge mess on our hands. I pointed out the other day, 30 percent of the population of the Bahamas is now Haitian. Thirty percent of that country is now occupied by people who have fled Haiti because of the repression and economic conditions in that nation. Twenty percent of children never reach the age of 5 in Haiti. The average income is $250. It is a poor Black country, and as a result I don't think we give it the kind of support we should have been giving it. In fact, over the last 36 months we embargoed any assistance directed to the Government of Haiti. What kind of a country do we live in today that turns to a nation only 300 or 400 miles off our shore, with people living in desperate conditions, with the highest rate of AIDS in the hemisphere, and we have virtually nothing to say to them. Here we have today, once again, these impoverished, poor people down there, who had to live under dreadful governments over the years, finally get one they elect democratically, and because we don't like it, it is a failed leadership in our view, we walk away from it, and now you have thugs running the place again. It is not all our fault but, Mr. President a large part is. I am terribly disappointed about what has happened, and I wanted to rise this morning to express those sentiments. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise to very briefly address two subject matters. As I understand it, we will be moving later this morning to this ETI bill, or the extraterritorial income legislation. My fervent hope is that in addition to debating the underlying bill itself, we will also have an opportunity to raise questions about a staggering set of issues that is unfolding in our country, and that is the outsourcing of jobs all across this Nation to foreign lands. We all understand this happens from time to time, but the explosion that has occurred in the last 36 months is deeply alarming to many Americans. We now have lost some 2.6 million to 2.7 million jobs over the last 36 months in the manufacturing sector alone. Many of these jobs are showing up either offshore in places such as India, Bangladesh, the People's Republic of China, or elsewhere. There is great concern in this country that we are losing a very important strategic base in our Nation, not to mention these critically important jobs which can never be replaced. I inform my colleagues, and I know others feel similarly as I do, when we get to this bill there will be some opportunities to offer amendments and to address the very issue of American jobs. When we hear the administration say, as the chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers did just a few days ago, that outsourcing of jobs was a good thing for America, we begin to understand the depths of concern people have when the administration fails to understand, at least through its leadership, how critically important it is that we stand up and do what we can to preserve critically important jobs, although not at the expense of international trade. We all understand the importance of trade in a global economy, but we also understand if we are going to be a vibrant participant in a global economy that we have to produce the goods or the services to compete. If not only low-income jobs are given away but also high-technology jobs, information technology jobs, and engineering jobs, for instance, are leaving, then the ability of this country to compete in the 21st century is going to be severely disadvantaged. I look forward to the coming hours today, tomorrow, and possibly Friday, to engage with my colleagues in some of this debate and discussion. It will be the first time since we have returned that we are going to have a real debate and discussion about jobs in this country and what we might do in this body to address those issues.