Democrats: Romney's job creation claims are fundamentally dishonest
The Democrats are already jumping on the Romney/Bain bandwagon. While these critiques are not totally fair they will have an impact.
Reuters has a firsthand example of this. Today's special report chronicles the story of GS Technologies in Kansas City, Missouri, a steel mill that had been in business since 1888—and for decades was a major local employer. The mill work was hard, but the wages were fair, and the mill lifted "countless families into the middle class," allowing them to buy homes, cars, and college educations.
That is, until Bain showed up.
"Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month. What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees."
That's right. The man who denounced President Bush's bank bailouts in 2008 and President Obama's successful rescue of the auto industry relied on a federal bailout to profit off a bankrupt company.
Mitt Romney has made the central argument of his candidacy the fact that he has been a private-sector job creator—to the tune of 100,000 jobs.
That is fundamentally dishonest—and it's a slap in the face to those who have lost their livelihoods to Mitt Romney's profiteering ways.