Amidst billions in misspent, ineffective stimulus, high unemployment and a Treasury Secretary telling us unemployment will get worse before it gets better, a pearl of common sense emerges from Congress in the person of Representative Frank Wolf (R- 10th District) in the form of The Bring Jobs Back to America Act.

The bill would require the Department of Commerce to develop strategies to both bring back outsourced overseas jobs and set targets for manufacturing sector job creation. The bill uses tax incentives and establishes priorities for research related to emerging technologies and economic threats.  While the bill is wide-ranging in scope, the common sense of it is undeniable.

Replacing complaints related to American jobs moving oversees and the search for villains, Rep. Wolf proposes a common sense set of solutions. While the proposal establishes federal guidelines and support, it also empowers state and local governments to pursue job repatriation and the grants necessary to do so.
Millions of jobs have moved overseas, everything from call center work to heavy manufacturing. The proposal from Rep. Wolf seeks to bring back jobs that already exist and that were the product of American innovation. This proposal, this strategy, should for us all transcend party and ideology. This proposal is about setting a new course that will result in permanent job growth.  Common sense dictates that job growth is critical to economic growth.

Call center jobs, while not glamorous, are jobs nonetheless and with the proper competitive incentives can be brought back painlessly and quickly. In the context of 10 percent unemployment, what reason would there be to not support that effort?

Manufacturing jobs will, granted, take a bit more time but they will never come back if we do not begin. Congressman Wolf’s proposal does in fact begin the process of bringing back a sector that has been eroding for decades and that nearly all agree should be a critical part of our economic infrastructure.

As a business person I look first to what resources I know already exist before venturing out to seek opportunities that may or may not exist.  Representative Wolf has done just that with The Bring Jobs Back to America Act. It’s simple, if not typically absent, common sense.  We could all use a bit more of that in Congress.

Dennis Landry

South Riding