Democrat vice presidential candidate John Edwards travled to Newton — a city hit hard recently by factory layoffs — to tout his runningmate John Kerry’s jobs plan. Edwards says the Bush administration hasn’t done enough to create new jobs and cites the latest job report that showed 96-thousand new jobs. He says 96-thousand jobs is not enought to take care of the new people entering the workforce. He says 150-thousand new people are entering the job market each month, so the administration is not even keeping up. He says when the administration talks about the employement numbers looking better, they don’t talk about the people who’re giving up. Edwards says the new jobs are the same as the jobs that’ve been lost. He says about 40-percent of the jobs are in government, and he says about 30-thousand of the jobs are janitorial, fast-food restaurant, part-time — not the kind of jobs he says will ever support a family. He says the Kerry/Edwards plan would reduce the outsourcing of jobs. He says they want to get rid of tax cuts for companies that’re sending jobs overseas and says they instead will give tax breaks to companies that keep jobs in the U.S. Edwards says they would also come down harder on trade barriers. He says, “We are being pummeled by enforcement actions from other countries, but the Bush Administration does not enforce the obligations of other countries.” He says China is an example, saying they manipulate their currency to allow them to dump goods on the American market that’re 40-percent cheaper. Edwards says we need to invest in the creative, innovative jobs of the future, and says we should start by making the fuel efficient vehicles of the future with union workers in the U.S. Edwards took questions from the audience after talking about the jobs issue.
