Congress should back American workers
Now that Congress has restored jobless benefits for the unemployed, the administration needs to focus on creating more good American jobs to put people back to work. It need look no further than how it spends our money with government contracts.
For example, the Air Force is in the market for $35 billion worth of new airborne refueling tankers. Boeing is ready to build these tankers, creating some 50,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs nationwide, around 9,000 here in Washington.
However, Airbus is waging a public-relations and lobbying campaign to force the Pentagon to delay the contract and change its rules. Airbus wants to strong-arm the Pentagon into purchasing its much larger, illegally subsidized tanker, which would be manufactured overseas, outsourcing American jobs.
Airbus is complaining that the rules are protectionist since the Air Force doesn’t want a larger tanker the size of its A330. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. In fact, France prevented U.S. companies from bidding on its own tanker contract in 2004, sole-sourcing it to Airbus.
If President Obama wants to keep us moving in the right direction, he’ll stand up to European pressure on the tanker contract and create 50,000 U.S. jobs by purchasing an American-made tanker. Illegally subsidized French companies have no right to tell the Air Force how to spend U.S. taxpayer money.
— Malcolm Amado Uno, executive director, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Washington, D.C.