Joe Lieberman: “for working families in the State of Connecticut and across the country, these are hard economic times. Millions have…”

“for working families in the State of Connecticut and across the country, these are hard economic times. Millions have lost their jobs, and millions more fear they might lose theirs soon. Outsourcing American service jobs overseas, as the President's economic advisors suggest, would only add to the unemployment rolls and to growing anxieties. What American needs is not a plan for creating jobs abroad, but a plan for creating jobs here at home. Nearly all sectors have been affected by the national economy's sluggish performance during the past 3 years, with job losses across the board. The manufacturing sectors has been hit particularly hard. In the State of Connecticut, nearly 26,400 manufacturing jobs have been cut in the past 38 months, and 33,500 since January 2001. Most of these jobs have gone overseas. In addition to manufacturing job loss, services and high-tech jobs are also being sourced outside the United States--to lower cost, lower wage countries. The employment trends in this sector are harder to quantify, but the impact is no less real. They threaten to put U.S. technological competitiveness and future economic growth at risk. The Bush administration has done next to nothing to stop this hemorrhaging--relying instead on factory photo-ops, toothless trade missions and new organizational charts.”