Romney Critical of Government Aid That Helped Bain Profit
Mitt Romney during a campaign stop at Southwest Office Systems, on June 5, 2012, in Fort Worth, Texas. Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Arsenio Muniz Rosad, who lost his job at plant after Mitt Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, closed it down, in Aguada, Puerto Rico, Nov. 11, 2011. The buyout of an Illinois medical company by Romney's equity firm shows the unintended human costs and messy financial consequences behind the brand of capitalism that Romney practiced for 15 years. Christopher Gregory/The New York Times/Redux
By David J. Lynch - Jun 5, 2012 7:30 PM CT
Mitt Romney likes to say that “government does not create prosperity.”
His record in the private equity industry shows otherwise.
During Romney’s years as chief executive of Bain Capital LLC, companies owned by the firm received millions of dollars in benefits from a variety of state and local government economic development programs.
In California, taxpayer money built one Bain company a conveyor bridge between two of its buildings. New York City gave another Bain company tax breaks and lower energy bills to discourage it from moving to New Jersey. And in Indiana, a county government issued bonds to help buy new equipment for a Bain-owned steel plant -- a business success featured in a Romney campaign ad touting his private sector prowess.
“From a national perspective, this makes no economic sense to allow cities and states to do this,” said Arthur Rolnick, former director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “In general, you want the market to be making these decisions -- not the political system.”
The public-private agreements, which began in the first decade of Romney’s tenure as CEO, show that government played a supporting role in establishing Bain as among the nation’s most successful private equity firms and enabling him to accumulate a fortune his campaign says could reach $250 million.
Criticizing Government Involvement
On the campaign trail, the presumptive Republican nominee has hammered at President Barack Obama for favoring an unhealthy government role in the economy.
“When government, rather than the market, routinely selects winners or losers, or puts its hands on the scales of justice then enterprises and entrepreneurs can’t predict their prospects,” Romney said in a March 19 speech at the University of Chicago.
Asked about the disconnect between Romney’s free market rhetoric and Bain’s track record, Amanda Henneberg, a campaign spokeswoman, said: “It’s not at all uncommon for state and local governments to use competitive incentives and programs to create a favorable business climate.”
Yet in his Chicago speech, the former Massachusetts governor decried the “endless subsidies and credits intended to shape behavior in our economic society,” and assailed government “intrusion in the workings of the free marketplace itself.”
Exhibit A in Romney’s attack is the Obama administration’s investment in the failed solar power company Solyndra, which could cost taxpayers more than $500 million.
Massachusetts Investment Bankruptcy
Romney’s effort to capitalize on the administration’s stumbles was complicated this week by the June 1 failure of a Massachusetts clean energy company that received state financing while he was governor.
As a private equity investor, Romney showed no reluctance to accept help from government coffers -- on one occasion even becoming partners with taxpayers.
In October 1994, a Connecticut state fund made a $500,000 equity investment in Environmental Data Resources of Milford, Connecticut, which Bain had helped start. The state’s Connecticut Innovations agency the previous year also had given the firm a separate $500,000 to be paid back with royalties from its software products.
The company used the money to hire several technologists and digitize old maps of industrial sites, according to Rob Barber, the company’s chief executive.
EDR Expansion
Beginning in 1991, Bain had invested $2.3 million in the company, which produced software for environmental site assessments, ultimately recording a 35.7 percent return, according to a Deutsche Bank prospectus that detailed the performance of Bain’s funds through 1999. Starting with just three employees, EDR grew to about 50 workers by the middle of the decade, Peter Cashman, the company’s founder, said in an interview.
Victor Budnick, who was then Connecticut Innovations’ director of investments, says the company obtained better terms for the public funds than it likely could have received from private investors. Private money would have been “disadvantageous from the perspective of ownership,” Budnick said.
The deal ultimately profited both the government and EDR. The state got back $3.8 million in return for its $500,000 equity stake plus an additional $1 million from its royalty- linked investment, according to Pamela Hartley, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Innovations.
Management-led Negotiations
There is no indication that Romney, who became CEO of Bain Capital in 1984, was directly involved in any of the individual companies’ negotiations with government officials. Such operational issues were typically left to the management of companies Bain acquired.
“I never heard of Bain Capital,” says Walter Sprouse, who was president of the Randolph County Economic Development Corporation in North Carolina when it ponied up $375,000 to help lure Sealy Inc.’s corporate headquarters.
Even so, Romney benefitted from the incentives, along with other Bain investors. When the Internet advertising company Double Click Inc. considered moving its Manhattan-based corporate headquarters, New York City’s Economic Development Corporation in 1999 provided a $4 million package of sales and energy tax breaks tied to the company’s payroll.
The company reported a loss of $56 million that year and was acquired by Google Inc. in 2008. Bain realized $88.6 million on its initial $8.5 million Double Click investment, made in 1997, according to the Deutsche Bank prospectus.
Bain Portfolio Returns
Bain’s investments in the companies that benefited from government actions were part of a portfolio that earned an 88 percent average annual return through the end of 1999, the prospectus said.
The two-time presidential candidate says his business experience qualifies him to turn around the troubled national economy. He accuses government of “standing in the way” of recovery.
Yet, government officials employed a variety of techniques to help Bain-owned companies. In Kansas City, city officials issued industrial revenue bonds as part of a financing arrangement that saved a Bain-owned steel company about $3 million in property taxes over five years, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
Decaying Steel Plant
The GS Technologies facility, dating to the late 19th century, had employed around 4,500 workers at its peak. By the mid-1990s, the plant, which produced wire rods for the auto and furniture industries, cried out for modernization.
“Really, it was in bad, bad shape. It looked like something out of a Dickens novel,” said Mario Concha, who headed the company’s international division at the time.
To help fund a $70 million updating, the city in October 1993 authorized a $45 million industrial revenue bond, which GS Technologies was to purchase. Kansas City issued the first $5 million the following year and used the proceeds to buy steel- making equipment and lease it back to the company. That arrangement was designed so that the city could cut the mill’s property tax bill by 50 percent, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
New equipment didn’t solve all the company’s problems. Foreign competition and a two-month strike in 1997 fueled a downward spiral, which led to bankruptcy in 2001. The Obama campaign has featured GS Technologies in a political ad that includes one former mill worker accusing Bain of “vampire” capitalism.
Industrial Revenue Bonds
Industrial revenue bonds, typically repaid with money generated from the project they fund, act as a subsidy for private business, reducing either their financing costs or their tax bill, said Timothy Bartik, senior economist of the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
One of Bain’s companies drew government benefits on two coasts. In 1993, when Leiner Health Products of Torrance, California, was looking for a new home, officials in nearby Carson, California, agreed to construct a $500,000 conveyor bridge linking two buildings the maker of vitamins and nutritional supplements was eyeing.
“Our construction guys were in awe of how fast the turnaround time was for permits,” Giffen Ott, the former Bain executive who was the company’s vice president of manufacturing, told The Los Angeles Times.
Ott didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.
Upgrading Public Roads
Five years later, Leiner decided to move a portion of its manufacturing operation from Ohio to a new site in York County, South Carolina. State and local officials provided a package of benefits that included worker training, upgrades to public roads, water and sewer facilities, and tax breaks. Officials with the state’s Employment Security Commission even handled inquiries from would-be job applicants, according to a July 21, 1998 article in The Herald of Rock Hill, South Carolina.
The county cut Leiner’s property tax assessment by 43 percent, saving the company “millions of dollars,” according to Mark Farris, York County economic development director.
Leiner has since been acquired by NBTY Inc., which itself was acquired by the Carlyle Group in 2010. Michael Collins, NBTY’s chief financial officer, didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.
Free market purists object to such government aid to business, saying profitable companies don’t need it and unprofitable ones should be allowed to fail.
A Corporate Gift
“It is a gift to the corporation,” says James Bennett, eminent scholar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “The American welfare queen is the American corporation. All they’re doing is grabbing for taxpayer benefits and taxpayer dollars.”
The attractiveness of such deals can be glimpsed in cases where the marriage of public and private resources pays off for both sides. In 1998, state and local officials in Indiana assembled a package of incentives to convince Steel Dynamics Inc. (STLD) to locate a $341 million steel plant in Whitley County, in the state’s northeast corner.
Whitley County issued a $13 million taxable industrial revenue bond to buy the giant caster at the heart of the steel- making operation along with a separate $10 million bond for sewer and water improvements. State officials kicked in workforce training aid.
Company Expansion
In the intervening years, the company has expanded its Whitley County facility twice and now employs 596 workers. Last year, it produced 876,000 tons of structural steel beams for the construction industry and rails for the nation’s railroads, according to the company’s filings with Securities and Exchange Commission.
“It was a fabulous opportunity. Jobs have developed beyond our expectations,” said Jeff Gage, who was the county attorney at the time.
In an ad entitled “American Dream,” the Romney campaign boasts of the role his “private sector leadership team” played in Steel Dynamics’ success.
Some of his allies acknowledge that a savvy public sector deserves some of the credit.
“The government was trying to help out,” real estate developer Donald Trump, a Romney supporter, said during a May 14 appearance on Fox News, “and sometimes, that’s not the worst thing in the world.”
To contact the reporter on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net
BIZ BLUNDERS: Two investments made by the Romney administration Acusphere in Tewksbury and Spherics Inc., which was formerly housed in Mansfield, above, — cost the state millions of dollars. Photo by Matthew West
By Dave Wedge Thursday, December 1, 2011
GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has hammered President Obama for his administration’s tax-funded investment blunders — but when Romney was governor, the state handed out $4.5 million in loans to two firms run by his campaign donors that have since defaulted, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.
The two companies — Acusphere and Spherics Inc. — stiffed the state on nearly $2.1 million in loans provided through the state’s Emerging Technology Fund, a $25 million investment program created while Romney was governor in 2003 that benefitted 13 local firms.
Acusphere, a biotechnology firm headed by a Romney campaign donor, got $2 million in 2004 that it was supposed to put toward a $20 million manufacturing facility in Tewksbury, which never became fully operational. Calls to Acusphere’s headquarters in Lexington were not returned.
According to MassDevelopment, the quasi-public state agency that oversees the technology fund, Acusphere defaulted on the loan after a “nearly complete shutdown” in 2008. A confidential settlement was reached in which a portion of the loan was repaid, MassDevelopment spokeswoman Kelsey Abbruzzese said.
She said the company defaulted on the remainder of the loan after the Food and Drug Administration rejected approval of the firm’s top product, a heart medication.
Spherics Inc., meanwhile, was lured from Rhode Island to Mans–field with much fanfare from the Romney administration, partly through a $2 million loan in 2005. By 2008, the company laid off all employees and completely shut down. The state received about $300,000 when the company liquidated its assets, but the firm defaulted on more than $1.5 million of the state loan, Abbruzzese said.
Together, the two companies’ investors and executives donated more than $7,000 to Romney’s past campaigns.
The Romney presidential campaign responded that although his appointees administered the program, he had initially opposed it.
“This specific funding was part of a stimulus package that Gov. Romney opposed on the grounds that government should not play venture capitalist,” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
“Because of his concerns, he vetoed half the funding, but the veto was overridden by the Legislature.”
The loans were approved by a seven-person advisory board that included two Romney appointees and three Romney campaign contributors, a Herald review found.
News of the Bay State companies’ failures come as Romney has slammed Obama for backing $500 million in government loans to now-bankrupt Solyndra.
“These guys were living high because it was government money. That’s the difference between the private sector and the governmental sector,” Romney said last week, slamming Solyndra.
As governor, Romney picked winners and losers of his own
U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney addresses supporters during his Wisconsin and Maryland primary night rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 3, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Darren Hauck
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON | Wed May 30, 2012 10:50am EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It would be a triumphant moment for any governor: A cutting-edge company announces plans to build a new plant that will create hundreds of high-paying jobs and bolster one of the state's most prominent industries.
For Mitt Romney, the June 2006 announcement by drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb served as a signature accomplishment as his four-year stint as Massachusetts governor drew to a close and a U.S. presidential bid beckoned.
The new facility came with a price tag: Romney and other state officials agreed to $67 million in tax breaks and other inducements to ensure the New York-based company picked Massachusetts over rival states like North Carolina.
Now as he mounts his second White House bid, Romney is hammering President Barack Obama for playing favorites with green-tech companies rather than letting businesses succeed or fail on their own. Romney is the presumptive Republican challenger to face Obama, a Democrat, in the November 6 election.
"Obama is giving taxpayer money to big donors and then watching them lose it," Romney's campaign said in an Internet video released on Tuesday.
It's a powerful line of attack that connects failed ventures like Solyndra, the bankrupt California-based solar panel maker that defaulted on a $535 million loan from the U.S. Energy Department, with the trillion-dollar budget deficits and sluggish U.S. economy of the past four years.
But it might invite unfavorable comparison with Romney's tenure as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. During that time, Romney pursued a hands-on approach to economic development that favored some industries over others and, in some instances, singled out individual firms for special favors.
Romney, a former private equity executive, backed tax breaks for film makers and biotech and medical-device manufacturers. His administration promoted venture capital-style funds that extended loans to start-up companies, some of which subsequently went out of business.
As the state's top salesman, he led the effort to lure desirable employers through tax breaks and other incentives.
"That's what governors do - they have to pick winners and losers," said Boston University professor Fred Bayles. "It's a calculated risk that governors and state politicians take in an effort to get jobs."
Sometimes, as with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Romney's efforts panned out. Other times they did not.
A $2.5 million state loan helped lure Rhode Island biotech firm Spherics Inc across the state line to Massachusetts in 2005. Romney's economic development secretary, Ranch Kimball, touted the move as "a tangible result of the combined and coordinated efforts of the public and private sectors to highlight the benefits of locating in Massachusetts."
The company shut down three years later, laying off all of its employees and defaulting on $1.5 million of the loan, according to MassDevelopment, the state development authority.
Critics on the left say Romney would have been better off investing in education and transportation to boost the state's business climate over the long term. Critics on the right say he should have concentrated on lowering business taxes overall, rather than aiding selected industries or companies.
'MAKES NO SENSE'
"It makes no sense to give tax breaks to some companies and not others when the solution lies in making the tax code m ore investment friendly," said David Tuerck, who heads the Beacon Hill Institute, a conservative Massachusetts think tank.
American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic research group, noted that while Romney the candidate opposes government intervention in business, many of the companies he owned during his time as head of private equity firm Bain Capital took advantage of government subsidies.
"In many ways Romney's whole approach to the economy is hypocritical," said American Bridge president Rodell Mollineau.
Romney's defenders say he was just doing his job as governor. Though a hub of innovation and research, Massachusetts has a high cost of living and a reputation for being hostile to business that often put it at a disadvantage compared with other states.
In such an environment, incentives are sometimes needed to lure marquee employers, but they were never the primary emphasis of Romney's salesmanship, Romney backers say.
"States are different from the federal government in that we are absolutely competing for businesses with other states," said Jim Stergios, who worked to streamline regulations as a member of Romney's administration. "Do you go back to Bristol-Myers Squibb and say, 'I know North Carolina is offering you $70 million and we're not going to offer you anything?' You've got to be in the game."
Campaigning for governor in 2002, Romney said he would not rely on special breaks or other "corporate welfare" to stem an exodus of manufacturing jobs.
"There are some companies that are only interested in tax breaks. Let them go to Alabama," Romney said at a news conference in October 2002.
Less than three weeks after taking office in 2003, Romney announced a new $15 million green-energy fund to help renewable-energy businesses in the state. A solar-panel company, two fuel-cell firms, a methane-gas facility and another firm got a total of $9 million in state funds in help.
'MAJOR ECONOMIC SPRINGBOARD'
In remarks at Konarka, a Lowell solar-panel firm that got a $1.5 million state loan, Romney said he hoped the green-energy fund "can become a major economic springboard in the renewable energy sector," according to a news release at the time.
Romney also signed off on a $12.5 million Emergency Technology fund for the state to help high-risk technology startups. The program since then has aided companies like E Ink, which developed the technology used in Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader, but has also lost money on some of its investments.
Along with Spherics, the program lost an undisclosed amount of money on a $2 million loan to biotech firm Acusphere, according to MassDevelopment.
Romney campaign officials say it is inaccurate to compare either fund with the Obama administration's loan program that backed Solyndra and other green-tech companies. Republicans have criticized Obama's program as a costly boondoggle that rewarded politically connected businesses and interfered with market forces.
Romney campaign officials point out that both funds were overseen by independent agencies, not political appointees. Romney used existing money from an underused trust to set up the green-energy fund, and he vetoed the venture-capital portion of the technology fund before it was restored by the Democratic-controlled state legislature.
"Governor Romney is proud of the record he had of making Massachusetts a pro-business environment that added jobs," said a Romney campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Romney also centered a 2003 economic-development bill around tax credits for biotech and medical-device manufacturers that create jobs. It is hard to tell if they had an impact.
Employment in the biotech sector rose 25 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a trade group. But federal statistics indicate that the state lost 4 percent of its pharmaceutical-manufacturing jobs and 20 percent of its medical-equipment manufacturing jobs during that period.
Overall, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in job creation under Romney's tenure.
Romney's economic-development efforts did not move the needle much one way or the other, said Leigh McIlvaine, an analyst with Good Jobs First, a left-leaning research group that tracks economic-development subsidies.
"He was betting just as blindly as anyone else was during that time," McIlvaine said.
Romney backed a much bigger tax break for the movie industry in November 2005, signing a bill that would give tax credits of up to $7 million for productions that film in the state.
Subsidies like these have been criticized as inefficient, while backers say they are needed to support a home-grown film industry and can boost tourism.
The program had generated about 1,700 in-state jobs through 2010, costing the state $142,500 in lost tax revenue for each job, according to the Massachusetts tax office. The state had gotten back 13 cents for every dollar it gave up in tax revenue.
In the case of Bristol Myers-Squibb, backers can point to tangible results. The $750 million facility, completed in 2011, now employs 350 people. It employed 1,000 contractors at the height of construction, according to the company.
The state issued $34 million in bonds to build new sewage facilities at the site, a former Army base, and agreed to modify an existing tax credit so the company could get back $33 million from the state. Labor leaders agreed to build the facility at reduced rates. The town where the plant was built agreed to allow it to be taller than local limits would have permitted.
Robert Lynch, an economics professor at Washington College in Maryland, said that broadly speaking these types of incentives have not been shown to make a difference.
"They probably could have spent the money more effectively in other ways," Lynch said.
Romney-Backed Solar Company Fails Days After He Faulted Solyndra
Repubican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks in front of the shuttered Solyndra solar power company's manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
By Jim Snyder - Jun 4, 2012 11:01 PM CT
Republican Mitt Romney, who criticized President Barack Obama last week for backing failed Solyndra LLC, supported as governor of Massachusetts a different solar-power company that has gone out of business.
Konarka Technologies Inc. filed to liquidate on June 1 after getting state and U.S. aid, a development that may muddy his attempts to use Solyndra to try to show Obama’s broader economic failures, a professor said.
“It demonstrates the ‘problem’ of having a record, in that obscure decisions and circumstances come to light, often far removed from their original frameworks,” Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political science professor, said in an e- mail yesterday.
Romney, who on May 29 claimed enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination, has sought to use Solyndra to underscore his argument that he understands how business works and Obama doesn’t. Romney cites Solyndra’s collapse two years after winning a $535 million loan guarantee as a symbol of Obama’s failure to create jobs with government spending, and the risks of using taxpayer money to fund private companies.
Thomas Pyle, president of the Washington-based Institute for Energy Research, said in an interview that both examples appeared to be an effort to pick “winners and losers.”
“This is clearly not the way we should be doing business,” he said yesterday.
State Financing
Romney, a co-founder of Boston-based private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC, promoted state aid during a January 2003 press conference in Lowell, according to a statement from Ameresco Inc. (AMRC), a Framingham, Massachusetts-based company that also won state help. Romney took over as governor that month.
Romney gave Konarka of Lowell, Massachusetts, a $1.5 million loan, part of $9 million in state financing to clean- energy companies. Romney also announced that a restructured green fund would provide $15 million in support for renewable energy in the state.
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney’s campaign, said on in an e-mail yesterday that the subsidies were approved by a Massachusetts board before Romney became governor.
Asked to respond to the candidate’s backing for Konarka, Saul said Obama has “a lot of questions to answer about why he used taxpayer dollars to reward wealthy campaign donors for bad ideas like Solyndra.”
Kaiser’s Foundation
A foundation run by George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and Obama fundraiser, was a leading investor in Solyndra. An investigation by Republicans in Congress hasn’t found evidence the administration gave Solyndra the loan to reward a political donor.
The administration has said the award was based on its merits and had been advanced during the Bush administration.
“Every day we see a new example of Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy,” said Lis Smith, a campaign spokeswoman. “Just one day after he pulled a political stunt outside Solyndra, we learned even more about his record of picking winners and losers in Massachusetts when one of the companies he gave a loan to went bankrupt.”
Supporters of clean-energy programs said Konarka’s collapse shows Romney is being hypocritical for criticizing Obama’s support for renewable-energy subsidies because some projects fail.
Similar Efforts
“Romney and allies are attacking the president for efforts similar to his when he was governor,” Dan Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which says it promotes progressive policies, said in an e-mail.
As president, Obama sought to make clean-energy support a central feature of the 2009 economic stimulus. The loan program through which Solyndra received its award provided about $16 billion in guarantees before ending last year.
In a May 2010 visit to Solyndra, Obama said the factory being built with taxpayer help was proof that “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith.”
Last week, Romney stood outside Solyndra’s shuttered facilities in Fremont, California, saying the company was a symbol of Obama’s failure to create jobs.
In 2003, then-governor Romney said the Massachusetts fund could become a “major economic springboard” by focusing on job growth in the renewable-energy industry.
One major difference between Solyndra and Konarka is the size of support. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in September, about two years after it won its $535 million U.S. loan guarantee. The company also collected about $1 billion in private investment.
Private Capital
Konarka attracted $170 million in private capital and $20 million in government research grants, according to its website.
Howard Berke, chief executive officer of the company, said June 1 Konarka had been unable to obtain financing and was unable to continue operations.
The company, which said it would lay off its 85 workers, listed $100,000 to $500,000 in assets and $10 million to $50 million in debt in its Chapter 7 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Worcester, Massachusetts.
At least four other U.S. solar-panel manufacturers filed for bankruptcy in the past year as the price of the products fell 50 percent on an oversupply and expanded production in China.
Pyle said Romney’s past support for state subsidies to clean-energy companies shouldn’t deter him from criticizing Obama’s more generous aid.
“It’s a little bit of a stretch to say, ‘He did it too, so let’s call it a draw,’” Pyle said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net
“I was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town. And he said ‘You know I’d like to change the Constitution, I’m not sure I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.‘”
To drive home the validity of the point, Romney added -
“You see then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow."
So, how good is this latest Romney’s idea? Would we be a better nation had the Founders been clever enough to include such a requirement in their original draft of the U.S. Constitution?
Had our Founders shared in the wisdom of the Romney proposal, it would have been bye bye Honest Abe Lincoln. While Lincoln twice attempted to start a business [ http://www.alincoln-library.com/abraham-lincoln-family.shtml) ], he was such a miserable failure at the process that neither business lasted more than a year and left him deeply in debt. Thus, he would have failed the three year test of Romney’s concept of what he believes is required to be an adequate president.
And for those who would like to credit Lincoln’s years as an attorney as ‘counting’ for being a businessman, that’s fine. But I would remind you that one Barack Obama also engaged in the private practice of law at the firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 1996, so either both Lincoln and Obama meet the Romney standard for understanding the needs of business or neither meets it.
How about President Ronald Wilson Reagan? An actor, a union president (should that not be an instant disqualification?), a sports announcer, a television pitchman, a governor and a president. Nope, nothing on the resume indicating that he ever ran a business.
Then there is poor old Dwight David Eisenhower. Our 34th president spent his entire career in the military before running for the presidency. Still, according to the latest GOP candidate for the office, defeating Hitler and saving the free world does not make one fit to lead the nation. While Eisenhower, according to his official biography [ http://www.dwightdeisenhower.com/biodde.html ], did spend two years working at the Belle Springs Creamery before attending college, sadly, he would have come up one year short of the three year requirement and would not have met the Romney requirement to run for the office.
Of course, while John McCain did not succeed in his quest for the office, he would never had been the nominee of his party unless he’d started up a mail order business from his prison cell in Hanoi. After graduating from the Naval Academy, McCain went directly to a military career, followed by his career in politics. In Romney World, that sort of career would not make the grade as McCain’s terrifying sacrifices in the service of his country come up short in the Romney vision of what it takes to be the Commander in Chief.
And then there is Teddy Roosevelt, whose entire career was comprised of elective and appointive government office, military service, and a two year stint as a law enforcement officer. No business experience for this great president.
Indeed, had this latest idea to fall from the unscripted lips of Mitt Romney been the law of the land, we could wipe two of the four presidents this nation has honored by carving their heads into the face of Mt. Rushmore from their stony prominence.
Maybe these great presidents would have failed the Romney test when it comes to qualifying for office, but I’d bet that each and every one them would have known better than to launch such a half-baked idea on the public before thinking it through. Apparently, thinking before speaking does not come with a career in the venture capital business. Too bad as this too is a useful prerequisite for someone wishing to hold the highest office in the land.
I wonder if we can propose Constitutional amendment to solve that problem?
President Obama at a Honeywell International plant near Minneapolis on Friday. He recorded his weekly address there, blaming Republicans, and also Europe, for the lagging American economy. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
By JACKIE CALMES and NICHOLAS KULISH Published: June 2, 2012
WASHINGTON — The bleak jobs report on Friday predictably had heads snapping toward the White House, looking to President Obama to do something. Yet his proposed remedies only underscore how much the president, just five months before he faces voters, is at the mercy of actors in Europe, China and Congress whose political interests often conflict with his own.
That day, Mr. Obama continued his weekly travels around the country, prodding Congressional Republicans [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/us/politics/obama-calling-for-job-creation-and-mortgage-relief.html ] to pass his “to-do list” of temporary tax cuts and spending initiatives to help create jobs. The Republicans only mock him, which leaves Mr. Obama free to blame his opponents and their presidential standard-bearer, Mitt Romney. But in doing so, he telegraphs a message of powerlessness that no leader likes to convey — least of all one who ran for office four years ago vowing to bridge Washington’s partisan gulf.
Developments overseas have not helped either. American officials have complained as Beijing began letting its currency devalue again [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/business/global/china-lets-its-currency-slip-raising-trade-tension.html ], making its exports cheaper and those from the United States to China more costly. And administration officials, and Mr. Obama himself, have lobbied leaders in Europe for more forceful action to promote growth or at least contain the threat of financial contagion there.
In his weekly address on Saturday, recorded on Friday at a Honeywell International plant near Minneapolis, the president cited the global woes buffeting the economy. But he singled out Congress for rebuke.
“While we can’t fully control everything that happens in other parts of the world, there are plenty of things we can control here at home,” Mr. Obama said. “There are plenty of steps we can take right now to help create jobs and grow this economy.”
Without mentioning Republicans, Mr. Obama said Congress had not passed measures he had proposed to get jobless construction workers rebuilding roads, bridges and runways; to give small businesses a tax break for new hires; and to help states pay teachers, firefighters and police officers. The steady elimination of public sector jobs has offset increased hiring in the private sector for more than two years.
“So my message to Congress is: Get to work,” he added.
Alan J. Auerbach [ http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~auerbach/ ], an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “Frankly, I don’t see what President Obama can do right now other than to forcefully present a detailed plan for action and challenge Congress to take it up.”
But “short of a real crisis,” as in 2008, Mr. Auerbach, an expert on fiscal policy, added, “I doubt that there is anything he can do to spur meaningful legislation before the election.”
Yet even in 2008, with the financial system near collapse, most Congressional Republicans rejected the rescue plan of a Republican president, George W. Bush. And now, despite their own record-low numbers in the polls, they have next to no incentive to help an embattled Democratic president lift the economy.
Continued economic anemia plays to Mr. Romney’s call for new stewardship, and to Republicans’ demands to extend and deepen the Bush-era tax cuts [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/taxation/bush_tax_cuts/index.html ] for the wealthiest Americans rather than let them expire, as Mr. Obama and Democrats want. And they figure that if Mr. Romney succeeds, it will probably help them win close House and Senate races, while Mr. Obama’s re-election could do the opposite.
By emboldening Republicans, the report on Friday that the economy added only 69,000 jobs [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/business/economy/us-added-69000-jobs-in-may-jobless-rate-at-8-2.html ] in May seemed to dash the hopes of some in the White House for a replay of 1996. That summer, as President Bill Clinton sought re-election with the economy improving, Republicans in Congress decided that their party’s weak presidential nominee, Senator Bob Dole, was doomed. To Mr. Dole’s chagrin, they compromised with the Democratic president to notch some significant achievements and ensure their own survival.
Gene Sperling, the chief White House economic adviser, said, “There is no question that had Congress acted on the president’s proposals nine months ago to prevent teacher layoffs, put construction workers back to work and cut small-business taxes, our job situation today would be notably stronger and unemployment would be lower.” Analyses by macroeconomic firms and nonpartisan financial analysts agreed.
While Mr. Obama seeks to make Republicans the villains when it comes to the economy, he is also, more diplomatically, blaming Europe. In Minneapolis and Chicago on Friday, he cited the impact of the continent’s travails on the American economy.
Citing the jobs report, Mr. Obama said, “A lot of that is attributable to Europe and the cloud that’s coming over from the Atlantic, and the whole world economy has been weakened by it.”
As lackluster as the American jobs data was, with unemployment inching up one-tenth of a percentage point to 8.2 percent, the news from Europe was far worse: the jobless rate in the euro zone hit 11 percent, the highest since tracking began in 1995. “There’s really nothing the U.S. can do,” said Charles Calomiris [ http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/ccalomiris/ ], professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School.
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama had a video conference call with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President François Hollande of France and Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy to discuss developments in Europe and plan for this month’s G-20 summit meeting in Mexico. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner continued to trade calls with Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. And late Friday, Mr. Obama’s Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Lael Brainard [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/business/lael-brainard-is-washingtons-financial-envoy-to-euro-crisis.html?pagewanted=all ], returned from a week of consultations in Athens, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris and Berlin.
Mr. Obama “emphasizes that what happens in Europe is of global concern,” said Michael Froman, the White House adviser for international economic affairs. “We want to be of help, whether in providing ideas or lessons from our experience as they work through these issues.”
For more than two years, Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner have prodded Europe, led by Germany, to do more to revive the region’s weakest economies rather than push budget cuts, which have resulted in more losses of jobs and consumer spending power. Their results, however, have been limited at best.
Germany has shown some willingness to bend. Officials in Berlin have signaled that they could accept higher wages at home and inflation above the euro zone’s average. Last week, a finance ministry spokesman said Germany could be more flexible about the timing of budget cuts in Spain — after Greece, the source of greatest anxiety now.
But Germans are deeply concerned that supporting big transfers of aid to troubled countries within the euro zone will create a precedent and the expectation in other countries that they, or their banks, will be bailed out whenever necessary. Germans also believe that issuing debt jointly with other European countries, known as euro bonds, which the United States supports, would be struck down as unconstitutional by their high court.
And they routinely dismiss any criticism from across the Atlantic as election-year politicking.
“Germans do not think Americans have anything to offer at the moment in terms of helping us with the euro crisis,” said Thomas Risse, professor of international politics at the Free University in Berlin. “Everyone thinks it’s just about Obama’s re-election here, which is wrong, but they think it.”
After the United States said this spring that it would not increase its contribution to the International Monetary Fund, its influence in Europe was blunted.
Even so, “the I.M.F. appears to not be having the influence it usually does,” said Franklin Allen, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “It seems like Berlin is making all the decisions at the moment.”
Jackie Calmes reported from Washington, and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.
Republicans rooting for failure in economy, Obama campaign says
David Axelrod, a campaign strategist for President Obama, addresses a crowd in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston. He took aim at Republicans on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. (Steven Senne / Associated Press / May 31, 2012)
By Jim Puzzanghera
June 3, 2012, 8:49 a.m. WASHINGTON -- Republicans are hoping the economy continues to struggle so they can win the White House in November and should put those political concerns aside and take steps to boost job creation, top Obama campaign officials said Sunday.
"They need to get off their hands and stop rooting for failure," Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod accused Republicans of "high-fiving each other" when bad economic news comes out.
"These are the architects of obstruction and now they’re complaining about the pace of the recovery," Axelrod said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "They should put down their political hats and join us and help solve these problems."
Obama's campaign officials reiterated the president's call for Congress to act on a series of job-creation proposals. Obama renewed that call after Friday's dismal unemployment report, which showed the U.S. economy added just 69,000 jobs last month.
Republicans seized on the poor jobs report, saying it was evidence Obama's policies have failed and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney was better suited to reviving the U.S. economy.
"For anybody who is urgently waiting for improvement in the economy, last week was not a very good week," Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney campaign advisor, said on "This Week," also citing a downward revision in economic growth in the first three months of the year and a rise in new claims for unemployment.
"We gave the keys to the largest economy in the world to a person who did not have any prior executive leadership experience," Fehrnstrom said. "He never even ran a corner store and I think it shows in the way he’s handling the economy."
But Cutter and Axelrod said that Republicans in Congress are stopping legislation that could help create jobs, such as Obama's proposals to increase spending on road, bridge and school construction and money for state and local governments to hire or retain teachers, police and firefighters.
"Instead of high-fiving each other on days when there is bad news, they should stop sitting on their hands and work on some of these answers," Axelrod said.
Romney supporters drown out David Axelrod at Boston press conference
Supporters of Mitt Romney chant slogans and display placards before a speech by Obama strategist David Axelrod, May 31, 2012. (Credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne)
By Sarah B. Boxer May 31, 2012 6:28 PM
BOSTON -- The Romney campaign is nothing if not dogmatic about staying on message. Today, they were relentless about keeping one of President Obama's chief surrogates off of his.
In an attempt to highlight economic failures of Romney's during his time as governor of Massachusetts, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod held a press conference outside of the Massachusetts State House. He said that under Romney, Massachusetts was ranked 47th in job creation - whereas now it's 5th - and that while Romney served, government jobs grew at a rate of six times the rate of private sector jobs.
Axelrod called Romney's record "alarmingly weak," and said that his record at Bain -- where he said the main motivation was "making money for yourself and your investors" -- was to blame.
"That's what happens when you try to translate those values and those principles into the governments of a state or a country," Axelrod said.
However, Axelrod's remarks were largely drowned out by Romney staffers and volunteers chanting tirelessly throughout. Though the Obama campaign says that they were always planning to hold such an event when they were ready to roll out this line of attack on Romney, word of the event leaked only late Wednesday night, accidentally. It was not supposed to be made public until early this morning.
According to Romney spokesman Ryan Williams, the campaign, which is headquartered in Boston, sprang into action, holding a conference call last night, organizing a press conference of their own an hour and a half before Axelrod's and turning out scores of supporters to be present when Axelrod spoke.
At their press conference, held on the same steps as Axelrod's, Massachusetts House Minority Leader Brad Jones was flanked by about 40 Romney volunteers and said that the net-net of jobs created under Romney was more than has been during Mr. Obama's entire tenure. After he was done, the Romney crowd more than doubled, and Obama supporters began to trickle in as well.
By the time Axelrod, arrived, the crowds were equal in size, and screaming at each other. Chants ranged from nebulous -- the Obama supporters at one point yelling "Fired up and Ready to go!" while the Romney supporters moaned "Solyndraaaaaa" -- to nasty -- with Obama's supporters chanting "Forward!" and Romney's supporters responding "Off a cliff!"
According to the police, the Obama campaign had a permit for their event, while the Romney campaign did not. The Republican crowd was allowed to stay, however, under First Amendment rights. The Romney campaign had two spokesmen and multiple advance team members on hand, one of whom blew bubbles toward Axelrod as he spoke.
"You can chant down speakers my friend, but it's hard to Etch-A-Sketch the truth away," said Axelrod upon taking the mic. Later, when asked what he thought of Romney staffers heckling him, Axelrod quipped, "I'm glad the governor's finally started creating jobs in Massachusetts."
Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith was more critical. "The Romney campaign has embraced juvenile tactics in the past - when they're running around with Donald Trump, it's not surprising that they'd engage in circus-like tactics like this."
Mitt Romney made a brief campaign stop on Thursday at the Solyndra headquarters in Fremont, Calif. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
By ASHLEY PARKER May 31, 2012, 1:25 pm
FREMONT, Calif. — Standing outside the headquarters of Solyndra, the solar-panel company that filed for bankruptcy protection last year after receiving $528 million in federal loan guarantees, Mitt Romney decried the shuttered business as “a symbol of gross waste” and as an example of President Obama’s poor stewardship of a shaky economy.
“It’s a symbol not of success but of failure,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m afraid the reason that the stimulus has been unsuccessful, that the turnaround has taken so long to occur, that the recovery has been tepid, is that the president fails to understand the basic nature of free enterprise in America.”
Solyndra declared bankruptcy in August 2011 after having received $528 million in federal loan guarantees, and its fate has been seized on by Republicans as symptomatic of big government waste in the stimulus program and the futility of clean energy subsidies.
Mr. Romney accused the president of steering taxpayer dollars to his friends and “cronies,” and of stifling free market competition by picking economic winners and losers.
“I also note how damaging a decision like this is for free enterprise generally,” he said. “What you’re saying to other inventors, to other entrepreneurs, particularly in the solar space, is that the best way to get ahead is not with the best ideas and the best technology and the best people and the best marketing, but instead with the best lobbyists. That is not the nature of how America works.”
The stop at Solyndra’s closed factory here represents a new effort by the Romney campaign to win over independent voters and draw further scrutiny to the struggling economy under Mr. Obama. The Romney campaign also believes that criticizing Mr. Obama over Solyndra will help deflect attention from the Obama campaign’s recent attacks over Mr. Romney’s time at the helm of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded and ran for more than a decade.
Mr. Romney’s event came as David Axelrod, a senior strategist for the Obama campaign, held a news conference [ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/axelrods-anti-romney-message-gets-drowned-out/ ] of his own, on the steps of the Massachusetts State House, to attack Mr. Romney’s record as governor — but Mr. Axlerod’s speech was largely drowned out by the chants of Romney supporters.
The dueling events signal one of the first times that the Romney and Obama campaigns are going head-to-head with campaign events, both trying to draw attention to their competing messages.
The stop at Solyndra was shrouded in secrecy. Mr. Romney’s campaign refused to release the location or details, but asked reporters to gather in the morning at a parking lot in Redwood City, Calif., to board a bus heading toward an undisclosed location.
A Romney adviser explained that the campaign was worried that if Solyndra and the Obama administration knew where Mr. Romney was headed, they would do everything possible to try to prevent Mr. Romney from holding his event at the shuttered factory.
“I think there are people who don’t want to see this event occur, don’t want to have questions asked about this particular investment,” Mr. Romney said, when asked why the campaign had gone to such lengths to keep the event a mystery.
But for all of the campaign’s advance planning, Mr. Romney arrived at the dusty backdrop for his speech at nearly the same moment that former President George W. Bush was unveiling his portrait at the White House. All of the networks and cable channels opted to cover the White House live, rather than show Mr. Romney’s painstakingly planned event.
Thursday’s remarks were not the first time that Mr. Romney has made Solyndra an integral part of his stump speech. He frequently mentions the company on the campaign trail as an example of Mr. Obama’s lack of experience in what Mr. Romney calls the “real” economy.
“Their corporate headquarters looked like the Taj Mahal, they had showers that looked like spa showers,” Mr. Romney said at a campaign stop last year in Exeter, N.H., a fact he reprised on Thursday. “Oh, these guys were living high because it was government money, it was someone else’s money, it was the taxpayer’s money.”
At a fund-raiser in the San Francisco area Wednesday night, Mr. Romney again talked about Solyndra, portraying the president as a failed venture capitalist who unsuccessfully tried to have government pick winners and losers.
“Have you seen the Solyndra corporation headquarters? You probably have,” Mr. Romney asked the crowd. “That’s what happens when government puts in hundreds of millions of dollars into an enterprise. And by the way, the president doesn’t understand when you invest like that in one solar energy company, it makes it harder for solar technology generally because the scores of other entrepreneurs in the solar field suddenly lost their opportunity to get capital. Who wants to put money into a solar company when the government puts half a billion into one of its choice? So instead of encouraging solar energy, he discouraged it.”
Returning to his overarching message, Mr. Romney concluded: “They don’t understand how the free economy works.”
The Obama campaign has pushed back on the Republican argument, by comparing Solyndra to Mr. Romney’s experience at Bain Capital and to his record as Massachusetts governor.
“The reality is that Solyndra received funding through a Department of Energy program created under the Bush administration – a program that has supported tens of thousands of jobs across the country and is moving forward with investments in innovative projects like the first nuclear plant built in the U.S. in decades and the world’s largest wind farm,” said Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, in a statement. “In fact, both Republican and Democratic administrations advanced Solyndra’s application, and the company was widely praised as successful and innovative both before and after receiving the Department of Energy loan guarantee.
Ms. Smith added, “As governor, Mitt Romney’s record was one of dismal job creation, outsourcing, increased spending and the highest per capita debt in the nation. Now, he’d cede the clean energy industry and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that come with it to China in order to please his Big Oil campaign donors, including keeping massive tax cuts for the oil industry on the middle class’s dime. Massachusetts couldn’t afford Romney Economics, and America can’t either.”
Mitt Romney in Fremont, Calif., on a surprise visit to the headquarters of Solyndra, a failed solar-panel company that received millions in taxpayer dollars. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
An Obama rally in Boston that David Axelrod led and Romney workers booed. Steven Senne/Associated Press
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ASHLEY PARKER Published: June 3, 2012
At Mitt Romney’s Boston headquarters, there was pure glee.
Word had just leaked that David Axelrod, the chief strategist for President Obama’s campaign, would arrive the next morning to attack Mr. Romney on the steps of the State House, a half-mile away. The campaign burst into full heckling mode — producing “Go Back to Chicago!” signs, rounding up a bubble machine and finding a spacesuit costume (“Astronomical debt!”).
“If ever there was a hanging curve ball, it was the idea of trying to pull off an Obama event within a short walk from the Romney headquarters,” said Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for the Romney campaign.
Drowning out Mr. Axelrod’s news conference with loud boos — a tactic that could be seen as undignified [nah, not 'could', 'should'; and nah, not 'undignified', try 'brownshirt' or 'fascist'] — seemed to signal the kind of battle Mr. Romney’s team intends to wage over the next five months: one that takes no skirmish lightly and provides no easy opportunities for Mr. Obama to make his case.
Mr. Romney is already running the campaign he and top aides say they envisioned more than a year ago — forcing Mr. Obama to defend his economic record in a gloomy environment.
Now, Mr. Romney plans to double down on the campaign’s strategy of trying to keep the president on the defensive by refusing to let the focus stray from the struggles of average Americans, a theme that can resonate no matter the short-term trajectory of the economy. That task may be easier in the wake of Friday’s weak jobs report, which provided fresh evidence that the economic recovery was slowing.
“This will be a long campaign filled with ups and downs,” Matt Rhoades, the campaign manager, wrote in an e-mail. “We understand we are going up against an incumbent president who is well financed and has an experienced team working for him. But Governor Romney has the better message and experience dealing with jobs and the economy.”
No one in the Romney campaign is doing a victory dance. Veterans of past presidential campaigns know very well that neither team has yet to fully engage the billion-dollar campaign machines that will clash in spectacular fashion in the fall.
But the sense of optimism in Boston is palpable. Mr. Romney’s aides say the Obama campaign has been less disciplined than they expected, moving from one line of attack to another in May. By contrast, Mr. Romney has released a series of television ads that aim to answer the question: What would a Romney presidency be like?
Mr. Romney’s advisers believe the president’s efforts to attack their candidate’s business experience have been undermined by a series of Democratic defections from the approved party line. On Thursday, former President Bill Clinton became the latest Obama surrogate to go off message, proclaiming Mr. Romney’s business record to be “sterling.”
“Their own guys are out there saying, actually, Romney has a really good record. Why would we do anything to get in the way?” said Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director.
The past week, aides said, highlighted the strengths of the Romney operation: discipline, efficiency and execution. In addition to quickly mobilizing to disrupt Mr. Axelrod’s news conference, the campaign also managed to keep a surprise visit by Mr. Romney to the headquarters of Solyndra [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/solyndra/index.html ] — the failed solar-panel company that received millions of taxpayer dollars — secret until minutes before the event in Fremont, Calif. (It was little noticed, however, occurring as former President George W. Bush was at the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait.)
Advisers to the Romney campaign said that after the bruising nominating contest, the team was eager to go on the offensive. It has increased its numbers so that overburdened aides doing the jobs of three or four people can now focus on their specific tasks.
On Friday, surrogates for the campaign descended on Boston for two days of meetings and training on how to best get out Mr. Romney’s message.
“It’s Mitt Romney 101,” one of Mr. Romney’s senior advisers said. “You’re getting them up to speed on all the key issues, and ultimately arming them for battle as well.”
Last Tuesday night — as Mr. Romney clinched the Republican nomination — a cadre of new team members had just arrived in Boston, and everyone went to celebrate at Boston Beer Works, where aides passed out baseball caps emblazoned with the words “The Long Slog.”
But as soon as they got wind that Mr. Axelrod was coming to their proverbial backyard, there was, in the words of one adviser, a “spontaneous combustion” to protest and heckle his visit — a spectacle the campaign said was a psychological victory that boosted morale and proved its willingness to battle the Obama campaign on any terms.
Still, the Obama campaign is intent on sticking to its narrative: that Mr. Romney’s past leaves him vulnerable as a steward of a challenged economy.
“The central premise of Mitt Romney’s candidacy has eroded over the past three weeks,” said Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman. “He isn’t the job creator he claimed to be. Governor Romney can’t substantiate the number of jobs he supposedly created as a corporate buyout specialist because his goal was never job creation, it was profit maximization for himself and his partners.”
And indeed, the Romney campaign is not planning on celebrating its recent victories. On Thursday, en route to Solyndra, Mr. Romney made a rare visit to the press bus. As a joke, a photographer began blasting “Born Free” by Kid Rock — a campaign theme song often played before Mr. Romney takes the stage at events — as the candidate boarded the bus.
The entire press corps laughed, but Mr. Romney seemed not to notice. Later, when asked why Mr. Romney had not acknowledged the joke, several aides surmised that he was just “very focused.”
The Republicans have dragged their feet on everything from the debt ceiling to student loans. Democratic Congressman George Miller called the GOP out, saying the party was trying to win power by killing jobs. Rep. Miller joins PoliticsNation.
Rep. Miller: Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy
[video segment (linked) just above embedded]
By Zachary Roth Mon Jun 4, 2012 7:22 PM EDT
On PoliticsNation Monday, Rep. George Miller accused congressional Republicans of sabotaging the American economy in order to deny President Obama a second term.
"I don't think there's any question," the veteran California Democrat told Rev. Al Sharpton. "They are absolurely purposely trying to keep the recovery from continuing to grow."
Even in these polarized times, it's rare for lawmakers to accuse each other quite that plainly of seeking to harm the interests of the American people for political gain. But Miller said there's plenty of evidence to support that take.
Miller pointed to Speaker John Boehner's recent threat [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-28/debt-ceiling-deja-vu-could-sink-economy.html ] that his party might once again refuse to raise the U.S. debt limit—consequences to the economy be damned. As Miller noted, after the GOP pulled that stunt last summer, America lost its triple A credit rating, and consumer confidence took a major hit.
"A year later, it's not a coincidence that they've decided to reignite that discussion around the debt limit," Miller said. "They're engaged in sabotage of the recovery of the American economy."
"What they're seeking to do is to deny the American workers those jobs this construction season," Miller declared. "Those jobs would be on the streets today."
"This is a conscious decsion that this president will have no successes," Miller concluded.
It's hard not to agree. As Steve Benen noted last week [ http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/01/12007563-the-road-not-taken?lite ] over at The Maddow Blog, May's dismal jobs numbers were in part the result of Republicans' flat refusal to act on any of the jobs proposals that President Obama put forward last fall.
For Republicans, the strategy of utter intransigence appears to be working nicely—indeed, it's the main thing keeping Mitt Romney almost neck-and-neck in the polls right now. But for Americans as a whole, the results aren't quite as positive.
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