Cronyism and outsourcing: Romney, Obama trade jabs

For­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, the pre­sumed Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, speaks at a rally at the Epcor Foundry in Cincin­nati in June. Pres­i­dent Obama and Rom­ney are at times using sta­tis­tics with­out con­text and exag­ger­at­ing their own records and mis­rep­re­sent­ing their opponent’s, fact checks show. (Kirk Irwin/The New York Times)

CHARLES BABINGTON, STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

CINCINNATI — Using unusu­ally vivid lan­guage, Mitt Rom­ney tried to take the polit­i­cal offen­sive against Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Mon­day, accus­ing Obama of crony­ism that “stinks” in steer­ing fed­eral con­tracts to sup­port­ers. He also dropped hints through a spokesman that a vice pres­i­den­tial pick could come any day.

Unfazed, Obama nee­dled his Repub­li­can rival for finally hav­ing a job-creation plan — for peo­ple overseas.

At the same time, though Rom­ney endeav­ored to switch the cam­paign focus, ques­tions about his tenure at Bain Cap­i­tal, a ven­ture cap­i­tal com­pany, seemed des­tined to shape the con­ver­sa­tion at least a while longer. On a day devoted mainly to rais­ing money, Rom­ney went on Fox News to com­plain that all Obama can do “is attack me” on Bain and other sub­jects rather than tak­ing use­ful steps to improve the economy.

Sure enough, the Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent showed no sign of let­ting up.

Ral­ly­ing for sup­port in cru­cial Ohio, Obama said Romney’s pro­posal to free com­pa­nies from taxes on their for­eign hold­ings would dis­place Amer­i­can work­ers. The pres­i­dent cited a study he said con­cluded that “Gov. Romney’s eco­nomic plan would in fact cre­ate 800,000 jobs. There’s only one prob­lem, the jobs wouldn’t be in America.”

Romney’s cam­paign, itself mov­ing to the attack, con­tended that Obama’s Energy Depart­ment has steered loans and grants to sev­eral com­pa­nies con­nected to the president’s polit­i­cal supporters.

Rom­ney, speak­ing to donors in Baton Rouge, La., said Obama had a pol­icy of “tak­ing your tax dol­lars and putting it in busi­nesses owned by con­trib­u­tors to his cam­paign. And that is smelly at best. It stinks.”

Rom­ney aides cited some well-known cases, such as Solyn­dra, a Cal­i­for­nia solar energy com­pany that went bank­rupt, and some less-publicized cases. They include Westly Group, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm whose affil­i­ated com­pa­nies have received fed­eral loans and grants.

Steve Westly, the company’s founder, is a major Obama cam­paign fundraiser.

Obama cam­paign spokes­woman Jen Psaki said the Energy Department’s deci­sions “were made with­out regard to polit­i­cal con­nec­tions.” She said some grants have gone to projects with “just as robust con­nec­tions to Repub­li­can cam­paigns and donors.”

While Obama held a free­wheel­ing town hall in Ohio, Rom­ney raised money in the safely GOP states of Louisiana and Mississippi.

He told donors who paid as much as $50,000 to attend a Jack­son, Miss., fundraiser that it was a good time to be a friend of the Obama cam­paign, but not a good time to be in the mid­dle class.

“I know that peo­ple in this room are prob­a­bly doing rel­a­tively well, rel­a­tive to folks across this coun­try. But not every­one in Amer­ica is doing so well right now,” he said. “The wait­ers and wait­resses that come in and out of this room and offer us refresh­ments — they’re not hav­ing a good year.”

Rom­ney, who strug­gled dur­ing the GOP pri­mary to explain his sug­ges­tion that he doesn’t care about the nation’s very poor, spoke directly to the poor Monday.

“We’re the party of peo­ple who want to get rich,” he said. “And we’re also the party of peo­ple who want to care to help peo­ple from get­ting poor. We want to help the poor.”

Address­ing another major elec­tion point of inter­est, top Rom­ney adviser Eric Fehrn­strom told The Asso­ci­ated Press that the cam­paign may announce a vice pres­i­den­tial choice by the end of the week. That would be sooner than many have expected, and some Democ­rats sug­gested it was another effort to turn atten­tion from Bain.

The tim­ing was far from cer­tain. Asked whether the announce­ment could come this week, Fehrn­strom said: “Tech­ni­cally it could, but the gov­er­nor hasn’t made a decision.”

The past sev­eral days of the cam­paign have cen­tered on Romney’s for­mer work at Bain Cap­i­tal and whether he has been straight­for­ward about the tim­ing of his depar­ture, a line of attack that Obama is exploit­ing to try to under­mine pub­lic sup­port in Romney’s busi­ness cre­den­tials and trust­wor­thi­ness. Obama assailed Romney’s tax plans for U.S. busi­nesses on Monday.

At his Ohio event, Obama cited an arti­cle in the pub­li­ca­tion Tax Notes sug­gest­ing Romney’s tax pro­pos­als would encour­age U.S. com­pa­nies to cre­ate up to 800,000 jobs over­seas. Rom­ney sup­ports “a ter­ri­to­r­ial tax sys­tem,” which would allow over­seas prof­its made by U.S. com­pa­nies to avoid fed­eral taxation.

Romney’s cam­paign cited cam­paign dis­clo­sure reports show­ing that the article’s author, Reed Col­lege econ­o­mist Kim­berly A. Claus­ing, has donated money to Obama’s cam­paign. Repub­li­cans say Romney’s over­all tax pro­pos­als would encour­age greater job growth at home.

Rom­ney “has a com­pre­hen­sive plan to reform the cor­po­rate tax code that will lower rates, get rid of incen­tives for firms to cre­ate jobs in other coun­tries, and encour­age the kind of eco­nomic growth Pres­i­dent Obama has been unable to deliver,” said cam­paign spokes­woman Amanda Henneberg.

For all the tax talk, the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign couldn’t seem to shake Bain, the com­pany that Rom­ney led in the 1990s to numer­ous suc­cess­ful cor­po­rate restruc­tur­ings, and to some less happy ven­tures that ended in bank­ruptcy or other problems.

Rom­ney has said he left Bain in early 1999, shortly before it invested in com­pa­nies that were pio­neers of job out­sourc­ing. Rom­ney says he played no role in those trans­ac­tions and decisions.

Two years later, how­ever, Bain was still fil­ing dis­clo­sure doc­u­ments with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion that named Rom­ney as the firm’s CEO, pres­i­dent, sole share­holder and “the con­trol­ling per­son.” At least one doc­u­ment in early 2001 said Romney’s “prin­ci­pal occu­pa­tion” was as Bain’s man­ag­ing director.

Bain says it took some time for dis­clo­sure forms to catch up with man­age­ment changes at the firm. Rom­ney says he was work­ing full­time on the Win­ter Olympic Games start­ing in early 1999. Democ­rats say Rom­ney has yet to sat­is­fac­to­rily explain.

Rom­ney trav­eled to Louisiana to attend a pri­vate fundraiser along­side Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jin­dal, who is among those on Romney’s short list for vice pres­i­dent. Rom­ney raised an esti­mated $2 mil­lion at the event, where 40 donors paid $50,000 to attend.

Jin­dal has been cam­paign­ing aggres­sively for Rom­ney in recent weeks, as have oth­ers thought to be under con­sid­er­a­tion. They include Ohio Sen. Rob Port­man, for­mer Min­nesota Gov. Tim Paw­lenty, Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Obama raised at least $625,000 at his own fundraiser at the Cincin­nati Music Hall before his pub­lic appearance.

While Rom­ney and pro-Republican “super PACs” are rais­ing huge sums, cam­paign laws place lim­its on how much Rom­ney can spend before the late-summer nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tions take place. Mean­while, Obama has out­spent Rom­ney in some key states.

Posted by AP News on Jul 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.