No, this isn't a parody or a spoof. It's what the Bush administration
actually said, according to
the Seattle Times:
The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.
The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the U.S. economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
I was wondering all this time how the Bush adminstration was going to whitewash being the first administration to have a net loss of
millions of jobs since Herbert Hoover. I figured it invovled some kind of double-speak, and sure enough I was right.
Of course, all the Democrats are attacking this nonsense:
John Kerry:
"I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq," he said. "I don't think we need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new president who's going to create jobs in America."
John Edwards:
In an evening appearance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said it would come as a "news bulletin" to the American people that the outsourcing of jobs overseas is good for the country.
"These people," he said of the Bush administration, "what planet do they live on? They are so out of touch."
Actually, the Bush people aren't out of touch at all. Their empathy and compassion for the needs of their $2000 contributors is outstanding. The rest of us? Well, Bush has a little trouble understanding where we're coming from. But fortunately, he has eggheads working for him who studied the Chicago Boys and are eager to model our economy around Chile and Brazil.