More cost savings from protectionism

It seems that California is not the only state that is coming to grips with the costs that come from outlawing offshore outsourcing. The AP’s Allen Breed reports that in the wake of efforts to block the offshore outsourcing of government contracts, some state legislatures don’t like the pricey hangover:

Governors and legislators in two-thirds of the states have ordered or proposed antioutsourcing actions. But many of those efforts at “economic patriotism” have run headlong into another time-honored American tradition: taxpayers’ demands that the government give them the most bang for their buck…. When Kansas officials learned that food stamp questions were being answered by workers in India under a contract with an Arizona company, state senators added language to the budget requiring the work be done in the United States. But the language was deleted when negotiators learned it would boost the state’s costs by $640,000, about 38 percent.