Turner: Obama's not stopping the bleeding

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama flew to Disney World last week in an unintended caricature of his posture as a jobs president. In Florida, he pushed for careers in tour-guiding and cart-driving in the low-paying tourism industry.

It was smarter flying to the Magic Kingdom than to Rochester, where Kodak's bankruptcy announcement underscored the nation's continuing slide as a manufacturing economy.

Earlier this month, the White House announced a series of "insourcing" forums with employers. The administration is handy with facile talk. Back in 2009, Obama, announcing a new framework to restore lost factory jobs, said: "America's manufacturers are at the heart of our country's economy, providing good-paying jobs for millions of American families." But since 2000, the country has lost 5.8 million manufacturing jobs, except for a tiny uptick of 335,000 in the last two years. New York State showed a loss of 4,700 jobs in 2011. And construction employment in New York is down 50,000 jobs, or 14 percent from February 2008.

Before the insourcing slogan, there was White House job czar Ron Bloom, who was also auto czar. Bloom left quietly last October. Who knew where he was or what he did for two years? Bloom was replaced by Jeffrey Immelt, head of GE.

GE under Immelt was a major outsourcer of jobs. And in the three years before taking over Bloom's role, Immelt's GE made more than $10 billion, spending $79 million on lobbying while paying zero taxes, according to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice and Public Interest Research Group. Immelt recently opposed Obama's tax increase policies by saying tax cuts are needed to create American jobs.

Among issues missing from the discussion is the outsourcing by American companies of high-paying research and technology jobs to China and other Asian markets. A division of the National Science Foundation last week reported U.S. firms sent nearly 700,000 such jobs overseas on President George W. Bush's watch.

Still, it has been Obama's responsibility to stop the bleeding, and he doesn't seem to have done it. Obama has failed utterly to deal with China, the terminal for most of these lost factory and high-tech jobs.

Obama has "left 1.3 million jobs on the table because he has failed to combat the most protectionist, the most unfair trading policies ever mounted in the history of the world," Robert E. Scott, a senior analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, told me. The institute is a progressive, labor-backed think tank.

Scott was of course referring to China, whose currency manipulation gives its exports a 25 percent to 30 percent advantage over ours.

For the sixth time, Obama, like Bush, refused to charge China with illegal currency games last month. His decision was disclosed two months late, quietly posted the Tuesday after Christmas.

Whatever Obama's doing is "too little and too late," said Scott. Asked why Obama won't confront China, Scott answered, "he's too close to Wall Street."

Obama did not help the jobs picture with his rejection of the proposed, privately built Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to refineries in Texas. Canada is taking the decision as an excuse to sell more energy to China, and less to the United States.

Douglas Turner is Washington columnist for the Buffalo News. His email address is dturner@buffnews.com. Join him for a live chat on the Politics Now blog beginning at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, leading up to and taking you through the State of the Union address.