Speaker John Boehner (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
A question: Which of these bills do you think the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is more likely to pass? The
Outsourcing Accountability Act, which would require "large U.S. companies to disclose how many of their jobs are based on U.S. soil and how many are based abroad"? Or the version of the surface transportation bill
increasing the weight limit for tractor-trailers from 80,000 pounds to 97,000 pounds and maybe even more, and allowing "the largest rigs, which comprise two and sometimes three trailers, to be as much as 10 feet longer—a total length of more than 100 feet"?
On the one hand, you have a bill introduced and sponsored by Democrats that would require companies with revenues over $1 billion, exempting ones that had been public for less than five years, to let us know how many employees they have working in the United States, how many employees they have working overseas and in which countries, and how the percentages changed from year to year. It's data you know corporations already have; most of them just don't want to tell us. Giving the public the right to this information would create informed consumers—and maybe give corporations a moment's pause when they thought about moving another set of jobs overseas.
On the other hand, you have the Republican transportation bill that would put heavier trucks with longer stopping distances onto the same roads as families in compact cars, after 2010 saw a 9 percent increase in truck crash fatalities. The trucking industry tells us that these heavier trucks would be made so they stopped as quickly as the ones on the roads now. Do you believe them on that? And how will they address the effects of putting tens of thousands of pounds of extra weight on our nation's 70,000 structurally deficient bridges? Oh, and wouldn't this just be a way for companies to pay fewer truck drivers to move the same quantity of goods?
Your House, ladies and gentlemen. Where the party in control wants to put massive killer trucks on the roads but has thus far blocked every effort to discourage jobs offshoring. Here's hoping the Outsourcing Accountability Act is the bill that breaks through that resistance. But it's a dim hope.
(Via DougJarvus Green-Ellis and Atrios)