A Seat At The Top Table

Right Democrat has this, which is transferable to Britain in ways almost too numerous to list:

The 1,850-member U.S. Business and Industry Council has called Senator Judd Gregg’s withdrawal as President Obama’s Commerce Secretary pick an exciting chance for the administration to add a domestic manufacturer to the outsourcer-dominated inner circle of economic advisors he has assembled.

Said Council President Kevin L. Kearns, “Despite his campaign opposition to trade policies that send U.S. jobs and production overseas rather than goods – and his promises to seek diverse opinions, President Obama’s economic advisors generally add up to a “Team of Outsourcers.” Senator Gregg’s withdrawal gives the President a terrific new opportunity to keep his promises and to break his discouraging pattern of Washington insider/orthodox economic thinker appointments.”

Kearns continued, “Rather than being embarrassed by the Gregg departure, the president should welcome a great and final opportunity to add to his senior economic staff a genuinely domestic manufacturer – that is a leader who can foster U.S. economic growth by creating new factories and good-paying jobs here at home – not another orthodox free-trade outsourcer.”

Added Kearns, “The American people and the companies that work so hard to strengthen the domestic economy and create middle-class jobs for American workers deserve no less. And a president who claims to recognize the virtue of diverse sources of advice urgently needs a Commerce Secretary who’s a true economic patriot and can think outside the box of the prevailing economic ‘wisdom’ in Washington.”

According to Kearns, the Gregg withdrawal also enables the president to add a representative of the economy’s productive sector to his cabinet, someone sorely now missing.

“Wall Street has plenty of representatives on the Obama team,” Kearns observed. “But the entrepreneurs that actually create the wealth American finance depends on are absent. For an economy and president that need to overcome today’s crisis by encouraging more production at home, that’s a major oversight, which should be rectified by the new Commerce Secretary appointment.”

The Council also applauded Congress for keeping in its final stimulus bill a Buy-American provision that can aid the nation’s economic recovery by boosting domestic manufacturing output and employment. The Council noted that the stimulus provision creates a critical precedent for other federal support programs for private industry, notably the automotive assistance packages and proposals to promote so-called green manufacturing.

But the Council noted that Buy American’s effectiveness for the stimulus and other programs will depend largely on greatly improved presidential enforcement.

Said Council President Kevin L. Kearns, “The decision to expand Buy-American treatment to all manufactured goods can significantly increase the bill’s stimulative effects. Despite the hysterical and false claims of opponents, substantial Buy-American authority has existed for decades. It is up to President Obama to see that this and other Buy-American laws are used effectively, fully, and consistently to boost domestic production – the only way out of the current economic crisis.”

Continued Kearns, “If President Obama wants the biggest growth bang per stimulus buck, he’ll work much harder than his predecessors to ensure that federal agencies Buy American at every opportunity, and to keep any presidential waivers to a bare minimum.”

Kearns also praised Congress for passing this precedent-setting Buy-American provision, which he said must be applied to Washington’s other current and potential future efforts to support private industry during the economic crisis. “As long as the U.S. economy is in critical condition, Washington must help various sectors of the private economy increase production and jobs. The strongest possible Buy-American and U.S.-content measures should be applied to these programs as well.”

Kearns called on Congress and the president to tighten the inadequate Buy-American and U.S. content provisions in the retooling loans extended to the automotive sector, and to add similar measures to the bridge loans Detroit has gotten under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. In addition, Kearns noted that Buy-American and U.S.-content provisions are urgently needed in green manufacturing proposals currently circulating in Washington.

“Both Democrats and Republicans have blithely and incorrectly assumed that green manufacturing jobs will be red, white, and blue jobs,” said Kearns. “Yet without high mandatory U.S.-content standards, most green manufacturing is as susceptible to offshoring as the rest of manufacturing. Vastly increased domestic production – not printing dollars or continued borrowing from foreigners to consume foreign-made goods – is our only way out of the current crisis. Hopefully, President Obama understands this basic fact at a gut level, even if his circle of orthodox economic advisors does not.”