The Washington Post has a blockbuster, must-read story today detailing how Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States” to countries like India, China, and elsewhere.
ThinkProgress’ Pat Garofalo gets to the heart of it:
Bain “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.”
In one example, Bain was the largest shareholder in a company called Modus Media, which “specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing“:
Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia.[…]
According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.”.
Other companies that Bain invested in sent jobs all over the world, including to Ireland and Mexico, while Romney has tried to claim that Bain was all about creating jobs and turning around American companies that otherwise would have gone under.
As one of Romney’s former partners put it,”I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation…The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.” And that’s what Bain did, even if it meant helping companies move operations to the same country Romney now blasts for stealing American jobs.
While the Romney campaign declined to comment for the article, they offered a laughable response today: outsourcing is different than offshoring. In other words, they didn’t dispute one iota of the substance of the story, but instead wanted to split hairs over semantics.
WHY IT MATTERS: While it’s troubling that Mitt Romney amassed a quarter-billion dollar fortune by bankrupting companies, laying off workers, and sending jobs overseas, where his policies would take America is of even greater concern.
Not only did Romney personally profit from the outsourcing and offshoring of American jobs, he has signed a pledge to a Washington lobbyist to protect tax breaks for companies who ship American jobs overseas. Mitt Romney also wants to encourage companies to dodge taxes by simply getting rid of taxes on foreign profits altogether. And he has also eagerly embraced the House Republican budget plan that also protects tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and also abolishes corporate taxes on foreign profits — many of which are “foreign” only because of accounting tricks and other gimmicks.
By contrast, President Obama wants to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and instead use the money to reward companies who bring jobs back to America. The president also wants to make sure that companies pay their fair share by instituting a global minimum tax to make sure they don’t use tricks and gimmicks to avoid paying what they owe.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
A Romney campaign co-chair said that Romney would “rescind” the president’s new immigration policy if he’s elected.
The Montana Republican Party bankrolled an ad attacking the Republican budget because it hurts Medicare.
Why the revelations about Romney’s career as an outsourcer really matter.
The week in Romney lies.
Members of Congress who supported a massive giveaway to Big Oil received $38.6 MILLION from the industry.
Four policies that can help women (and men) “have it all.”
Polls show that President Obama has a massive lead over Mitt Romney among Latinos in key swing states.
GOP governors continue to be at odds with Romney’s doom-and-gloom talk about the economy.
Half the states protect men’s health more than women’s.