Idaho is one of two dozen states where legislators with a sense of principle have put their foot down to stop the hemorrhaging of work to low-wage foreign contractors.
State Sen. Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, introduced legislation after discovering Idaho's Health and Welfare department had subcontracted call-center work to India to handle inquiries. The bill is working its way through hearings.
Denying Idaho citizens work in favor of India's lower wages results in pitifully small savings, perhaps under $100,000. Unless stopped, other agencies might succumb to the savings myth. Besides, if Idaho finances are so fragile they require savings of mere dollars on a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, then political guardians of Idaho's fiscal affairs are bungling amateurs.
This is penny-wise-pound-foolish frugality: Idaho jobs of families that contribute to local economies are lost.
The love affair for outsourcing, however, is turning sour. In addition to second thoughts of states, industry is concerned about security of critical data naively entrusted to overseas workers whose loyalty to U.S. interests lasts as long as the next paycheck.
Beyond that, cavalier transfer of American work overseas is but one distressing indicator of bankrupt U.S. economic management.
The U.S. trade deficit last year totaled a record $665.9 billion that accelerated more government borrowing: Standard and Poor's estimates 6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product is now borrowed from overseas investors with the power to manipulate the dollar in big bond sell-offs or demanding higher interest.
Terminally ill airlines are closer to their last gasps. General Motors predicts huge losses because of a drop in sales of gas-guzzling SUVs.
Historic debt doesn't discourage Congress: It ladled out another $81.4 billion this week for Iraq and Afghanistan war operations, bringing total expedition costs to $300 billion.
In one of his grimmest forecasts, investment expert Warren Buffett figures the United States could owe the world $11 trillion by 2015, with annual debt service of $550 billion causing "significant political unrest in the U.S."
The future is utterly forbidding: soaring debt dependent on overseas creditors; higher oil prices; shrinking government revenues; jobs lost overseas; lagging sales of the largest U.S. automaker; aerospace giant Boeing now a struggling second fiddle to the European Airbus, and Social Security and Medicare devouring national resources.
What in the world possessed one of Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's political appointees to see virtue in sending more dollars and more jobs overseas?
