Obama Outsources Jobs Agenda

“It just seems that at a time where we have over 23 million Americans who are underemployed or unemployed, the president's policies not only are not working, but he has actually made things worse.”

--U.S. Senator John Barrasso, July 10, 2012

President Obama has repeatedly spoken about the importance of creating good jobs for American workers. In practice, his policies have sent jobs overseas.

"It’s an agenda that begins with jobs," President Obama proclaimed in his first State of the Union address. "That is why jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010," he promised a year later. "At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else," he continued last year. "My plan," he insisted just last month, "will stop giving tax breaks to businesses that ship jobs and factories overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs and manufacturing right here in the United States of America."

After three and a half years of President Obama's economic policies, 23.4 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. Despite his rhetoric, the President has doled out American taxpayer dollars that all too often create jobs overseas instead of for Americans ready, able, and desperate for work.

• The Energy Department admitted that 80 percent of some green energy programs -- including $2.3 billion in manufacturing tax credits -- benefitted foreign firms employing workers in China, South Korea, Spain, and other countries.
• The federal government spent nearly $2 billion in stimulus money on wind power projects, but almost 80 percent of the money went to foreign manufacturers, financing an estimated 6,000 jobs overseas. Foreign-owned manufacturers built 1,219 of the 1,807 turbines erected on 28 wind farms.
• Just weeks before the Department of Energy finalized a $1.2 billion loan guarantee for solar company SunPower, the company announced plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Mexico instead of in the United States.
• Vice President Biden applauded the Administration's $529 million loan guarantee to Fisker for its potential to generate thousands of American manufacturing jobs. Instead, the company created just 500 jobs, in Finland.
• The Obama Energy Department gave $3.1 billion in loans to First Solar, which recently admitted that it employs more workers overseas than in the United States.
• President Obama and Vice President Biden personally appeared at the groundbreaking of plants of two electric car battery companies that received a combined $300 million in federal stimulus dollars. Largely owned by Koreans, both businesses purchased Korean equipment and supplies, contracted with at least 11 Asian firms to perform construction work, and filled many sought-after jobs with Korean nationals.
• The Administration doled out more than $7 million in federal stimulus funds to four Oregon forestry firms, which promptly hired 254 foreign nationals to do the work.
• President Obama loaned $2 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance oil exploration off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, inexplicably choosing to spend taxpayer money to support Brazilian, not American, energy jobs.
• One analyst estimated that job losses from the Obama Administration's six-month moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would cost 19,000 American jobs. The Obama Administration itself projected its deepwater drilling moratorium would destroy 23,000 jobs, then implemented the policy anyway.
• The federal government gave one of California’s largest utilities a $337 million loan guarantee to build a solar plant in Arizona. The company will use 800,000 solar panels manufactured by China’s Suntech Power.
• A federal stimulus grant for $817,000 to install television monitors on buses in Santa Clarita, California went to a New Zealand company, despite a qualified local contractor applying for the contract.

President Obama has presided over 41 straight months of unemployment above eight percent. His policies have failed to help American businesses create jobs as he spent taxpayer money to help foreign workers. Meanwhile, unemployed Americans have been left with nothing but empty speeches and broken promises.