posted on April 4, 2004 10:41:28 AM new
Outsourcing jobs: The PRESIDENT Said That?
Kerry ad puts words in Bush's mouth that Bush never uttered.
April 3, 2004
Modified: April 3, 2004
Summary
A Kerry ad has Bush saying that sending jobs overseas "makes sense." But Bush didn't say that.
The quote is actually from Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. The Kerry campaign claims Bush signed the report containing those words, but that's wrong, too.
Some Bush administration officials do indeed defend the practice of contracting for white-collar services overseas as one aspect of free trade, which they say creates jobs in the US. Textbook economics supports that notion. But the Kerry ad goes too far when it makes the President seem to be rooting for the loss of US jobs using words he never used.
Analysis
A Kerry ad released April 1 states that "George Bush says sending jobs overseas 'makes sense' for America." That politically clumsy remark was actually written by the President's economists, however. Bush himself never said it. The Kerry campaign went over the line in attributing the words falsely to Bush himself.
In a news release defending the ad, the Kerry campaign claims that the report in which the words appear was "signed by President Bush." But that's also false.
Actually, what Bush signed was The Economic Report of the President, which occupies only the first few pages of a 412-page volume that also contains the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers , a separate document signed by the three members of the council, not by the President.
