Democrats campaign to keep jobs at home

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats across the United States are calling for trade reforms to keep jobs from moving overseas as they campaign to put Barack Obama in the White House and expand their majority in Congress.

In upstate New York, a TV ad shows Democratic candidate for Congress Dan Maffei standing in a grassy field.

"This parking lot used to be full of people coming to work. Today it's full of weeds," Maffei says to the camera. "What did Washington do? They gave a tax break to companies that gave these jobs to China. I'm running for Congress to change that, keep our jobs here and create new ones."

In Oregon, an ad run by Democratic candidate for the Senate Jeff Merkley strongly echoes Maffei's.

"Tax cuts. They ought to go to middle class families. Instead, Washington has been giving tax breaks to corporations that ship job overseas. Imagine, spending your tax dollars to export Oregon jobs and subsidize companies building factories in China and Mexico," Merkley says in the TV spot.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, counts 35 close Senate and House of Representatives races where Democrats are raising trade as an example of President George W. Bush's "failed economic policies."

The result, she says, could be a Congress far more interested in reforming and enforcing current trade agreements than giving the next president - Obama or Republican John McCain - the authority to negotiate new deals that lawmakers are required to approve or reject without changing.

"There will be trade, but perhaps with new rules," said Wallach, an arch-critic of trade deals dating back to the North America Free Trade Agreement approved by Congress in 1993.