We’ve all seen the amusing Discover Card commercials in which a foreign man claiming to be “Peggy” answers the phone as a customer service agent for the fictitious U.S.A. Prime Credit. Through many different types of calls, Peggy is far from helpful and often leaves the customer bewildered, befuddled, or just plain bothered.

New legislation introduced in Congress December 7 would seek to ban companies that outsource call center jobs overseas to people like “Peggy” from receiving federal grants and loans for five years. The bill, called the U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act, would also require overseas call center employees to disclose their locations to U.S. consumers and give customers the right to be transferred to a U.S.-based call center upon request. It would further require companies to notify the U.S. Department of Labor 120 days prior to any proposed moves offshore and require the list of companies that offshore call center work to be made available to the U.S. public.

“It’s common sense that we should not be rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas while millions of qualified Americans are looking for work,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.), the bill’s proponent, said in a statement. “Taxpayer dollars should only be used to incentivize good corporate citizens who create American jobs.”

Although some call-center jobs have made their way back to the U.S., thousands of customer service positions are still being outsourced to locations like India, the Philippines, and Egypt, where operating costs are considerably less. In Egypt, for example, call centers operate at 54 percent of the cost of similar U.S.-based facilities, according to Everest Research Institute data.

But last spring’s political unrest in Egypt showed a big hazard in operating call centers abroad. When the populist movement to overthrow former President Hosni Mubarak was in full swing, the government shut down the bulk of the country’s telephone and Internet service, disconnecting an estimated 20,000 call center workers for such companies as General Motors, Unilever, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Google, HP, and Intel. These companies had to scramble quickly to reroute personnel and resources to other locations.

Foreign government stability aside, other outsourced operations have been severely disrupted by a typhoon in the Philippines; a military coup in Thailand; the terrorist bombings in Mumbai, India; earthquakes in Chile; and the swine flu epidemic in Mexico.

The solution might be as simple as hiring work-at-home agents. Companies that are looking to offshore their call centers might want to take a serious look at this option. It’s a great way to cut costs because it doesn’t require any investments in real estate or infrastructure, while at the same time putting willing Americans to work.