Hypocrisy Alert: Donnelly’s Outsourcing Past Exposes Democrats’ “Better Deal” Trade Push

Yesterday, Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN) joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Senate Democrats for the unveiling of the trade plank of their “Better Deal” agenda. As Senator Schumer said, the point of their new policies was to “propose a better deal for American workers.”

Yet if that’s the case, it’s ironic that Senator Schumer allowed Senator Donnelly to join the press conference. After all, Donnelly profited for years from his family business’ practice of outsourcing jobs to Mexico:

“Republicans, for example, have blasted Donnelly as a hypocrite for opposing outsourcing while holding stock in a family company that had sent some jobs to Mexico.”

Donnelly is used to this sort of hypocrisy though. While the Indiana Democrat sponsors a bill entitled the “End Outsourcing Act,” and called outsourcing “a fancy term for ‘Someone in Indiana has just lost their job,’” he’s profited tremendously from the practice for years:

“Although Donnelly’s brother runs the company, the senator previously served as a corporate officer and its general counsel before he was first elected to Congress in 2006. In a financial disclosure form he filed in May, Donnelly reported owning as much as $50,000 in company stock and earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in dividends on it in 2016 alone.”

Democrats choosing Donnelly to represent them on trade is telling. Not only does it expose the empty promise of the so-called “Better Deal,” but it also shows that Chuck Schumer and Democratic leaders know that Donnelly’s hypocrisy is a major liability with Indiana voters next year.