Obama Campaign Slams Romney’s Jobs Record, Romney Responds [Video]
As expected, President Barack Obama fired his opening shots at Mitt Romney‘s record as the owner of Bain Capital, Romney’s private equity company. The campaign released two documentary style videos and an informative website depicting Romney as a job destroying vulture capitalist.
The Obama campaign released a two-minute video and a six-minute video featuring interviews with former workers at GST Steel. GST Steel was taken over by Bain Capital in 1993 and in 2001 GST shut down its Kansas City plant, laying off 750 workers.,
The website released by the campaign, RomneyEconomics.com focuses on GST and two other companies that went bankrupt after being acquired by Bain. Those companies were Dade International, a medical diagnostics equipment firm, and Stage Stores, a chain of small-town department stores.
These videos are just the opening salvo, the country can expect to see many more campaign videos of this sort before the November elections. The two minute video will be airing in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia.
RomneyEconomics.com describe GST Steel like this,
“Kansas City’s GST Steel was a successful company that had been making steel rods for 103 years when Mitt Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the federal government was forced to step in and bail out the pension fund.”
Reuters wrote about GST in January, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams fired back at the story saying,
“Bain Capital invested in many businesses. While not every business was successful, the firm had an excellent overall track record and created jobs with well-known companies like Staples, Dominoes Pizza and Sports Authority.”
Attacking Romney’s record at Bain carries with it some level of political risk for the President. While there is a strong anti-Wall Street sentiment in the country, attacking Romney about Bain brings the focus back to the economy where Romney holds an advantage among voters.
Taking advantage of this vulnerability already Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said,
“We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record. Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation. President Obama has many questions to answer as to why his administration used the stimulus to reward wealthy campaign donors with taxpayer money for bad ideas like Solyndra, but 23 million Americans are still struggling to find jobs. If the Obama administration was less concerned about pleasing their wealthy donors and more concerned about creating jobs, America would be much better off.”
Watch the 2 and six minute videos about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital here.
