Political Quotes

“I want to relate to a problem that I see as real in this country, so I am going to talk for a couple of minutes about losing our manufacturing base. Now, it looks like we are losing our high-tech jobs in this country. Then, secondly, how serious a situation is it, and then maybe third, what are we going to do about it. Over the last 30 years, we have lost our manufacturing base as we have made the transition towards a service economy. A lot of that service economy has been in the area of high technology. I happen to be chairman of the Subcommittee on Research of the Committee on Science, and one of the concerns is what is happening to outsourcing as more and more American companies are sending their engineering work overseas. In the last 2 years, we have lost over 560,000 high-tech jobs. Why is that? It is a situation where other countries are doing it cheaper. Companies have decided that they are going to outsource and put related factories and facilities in India, in the Pakistans, and any country where they can get these quality engineers to do the work cheaper; and of course, with our new technology and our ability to communicate so rapidly with the Internet, it does not make a great deal of difference whether one is down the hall or whether one is over in India or some other country.”