 |
| Mitt Romney |
Bain
Capital doesn’t add up with the Republican presidential candidate's statements
about when he gave up control of the private equity firm Bain Capital.
President
Barack Obama campaign seized on the discrepancies Thursday to charge that
Romney was lying about his background and when he departed Bain Capital.
Romney,
in turn, said Obama was the one being dishonest, rolling out a hard-hitting
television ad that accused the president of launching "misleading, unfair
and untrue" attacks about the Republican's role in outsourcing U.S. jobs.
Well
Mr. Romney it seems as though you are lying and been lying for a long time, it’s
time for you to tell the truth to the American people.
"When
a president doesn't tell the truth, how we can trust him to lead?" the
narrator says in the Romney ad titled "No Evidence."
Mitt
Romney your narrator is misleading just as you, if there was no evidence then
why would this become public by media outlets, with information obtained from
government sources.
Obama
has accused Romney of being an "outsourcing pioneer" who invested in
companies that shipped jobs to China, India and elsewhere overseas. But Romney,
who has made his business experience the central part of his candidacy, claims
he had no role in outsourcing U.S. jobs because much of that activity didn't
happen until after 1999, when he says he had given up operational control at
Bain.
The
issue is when Romney left Bain, and whether he was at the helm when it sent
jobs overseas. You remember when Mitt Romney said he left Bain Capital in 1999.
The
documents, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, place Romney
in charge of Bain from 1999 to 2001, a period in which the company outsourced
jobs and ran companies that fell into bankruptcy.
Romney
has tried to distance himself from this period in Bain's history, saying on
financial disclosure forms he had no active role in Bain as of February 1999. But
one of those documents — as late as February 2001 — lists Romney's
"principal occupation" as Bain's managing director.
The
Obama campaign called the SEC documents detailing Romney's role post-1999 a
"big Bain lie."
And
Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said the presumptive GOP nominee
may have even engaged in illegal activity.
"Either
Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting
his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony," Cutter said, "or
he is misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid
responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments."
In
an appearance Thursday on NBC's "Today" show, Romney campaign adviser
Ed Gillespie called the outsourcing charge by the Obama campaign "a
lie" and asserted that job outsourcing wasn't the policy at Bain Capital
when Romney was in charge.
Even
as it sought the upper hand with the ad, Romney's campaign found itself
scrambling to explain the apparent discrepancies between the former
Massachusetts governor's past statements about his Bain tenure and the SEC
documents.
Romney
helped found Bain Capital in 1984. The private equity firm invested in various
companies, often restructuring their management and operations. Some became success
stories that hired new workers and enriched Bain's investors. Others struggled
or went out of business. Romney made millions of dollars and cites Bain as
chief proof that he understands private enterprise and job-creation.
The
Boston Globe reported Thursday that a Massachusetts financial disclosure form
Romney filed in 2003 stated he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002.
When
will Mitt Romney tell the truth and be honest, and stop misleading the American
people, and when will the tax returns
be released by Mitt Romney?
