President Barack Obama's re-election campaign released two new ads, "Mosaic" and "Come and Go," in Virginia Wednesday that attack Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for his time both as governor of Massachusetts and at Bain Capital.
Both ads end with the same message : "Romney Economics: It didn't work then and it won't work now."
The 33 second "Mosaic' spot highlights Romney on the campaign trail for governor claiming he would cut taxes, and then goes on to claim while he lowered the capital gains tax in Massachusetts, he raised taxes and fees by $1.5 billion.
The 31 second "Come and Go" ad claims Romney shipped jobs overseas to Mexico and China while at Bain Capital and to India while governor.
Both ads are also running in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.
Curt Cashour, Virginia communications director for the Romney campaign, issued the following statement in response to the two adds:
“These misleading ads are the latest effort by the Obama campaign to distract attention from the President's failed policies that have led to high unemployment and falling incomes. Mitt Romney was a successful businessman and governor with a decades-long record of helping to create American jobs, in contrast to President Obama's hostility to free enterprise that has left millions of Americans out of work. It's still the economy and the American people aren't stupid.”
The "Mosaic" ad claims that Romney's 2005 $275 million capital gains tax cuts as governor only benefited "millionaires like himself."
In June 2005 the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, which describes itself on its website as providing "policy research, analysis, and data-driven recommendations focused on improving the lives of low- and middle-income people, strengthening our state’s economy, and enhancing the quality of life in Massachusetts," found the legislation "would overwhelmingly benefit the most affluent taxpayers in Massachusetts, families and individuals who are already reaping the lion’s share of the federal tax cuts adopted since 2001.”
Download Whobenefitsfromcapgainscut
In February the Washington Post while fact checking the CNN GOP primary debate found that "Romney as Massachusetts governor added hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and closed what he called tax loopholes worth $1.5 billion.”
In June the Los Angeles Times found , and the records of Massachusetts laws and Regulations from 2003-2006 shows, that Romney did raise more than 1,000 fees by $375 million across a broad range of services - even counting a gas tax hike as a fee.
"The state raised the cost of elevator inspections, boat registrations, gun licenses and ice skating at public rinks," the Los Angeles Times wrote. "Fines for speeding tickets went up. A new fee was imposed on law school graduates for taking the bar exam. The cost of a marriage license jumped from $4 to $50."
Romney defended the fee increases, saying fees had not been adjusted in some cases for decades and that the fees only went to the services they were used to pay for.
In the "Come and Go" spot the Obama campaign says two companies that Bain Capital had a stake in, Modus Media and SMTC, outsourced jobs to Mexico.
The problem with this claim is that both moves, Modus in 2000 and SMTC in 2001, happened after Romney had left Bain in February 1999 to turn around the troubled and scandal-plagued 2002 WInter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
It's a claim the Washington Post has called the Obama campaign out on before.
In May the Wasington Post wroteof these moves: “We’ve gone over this problem with the Obama campaign before, awarding three Pinocchios to a January memo the team released blaming Romney for job losses and bad deals that took place after the former executive had stopped working for Bain. These facts essentially exonerate Romney from allegations that he was responsible for any outsourcing, bad deals and layoffs that occurred with Bain’s companies in the early 2000s.”
As for the state of Massachusetts outsourcing jobs to a call center in India, factcheck.org found in early-June that it was CitiGroup, who had a contract with the state to handle food stamp calls actually outsourced the call center:
"At the center of the issue was a contract the state signed with CitiGroup (which later sold the division to JP Morgan Chase) to handle calls about food stamps, and that company outsourced the work to a company in India. At the time, 38 states had similar contracts with JPMorgan Chase to handle food stamp calls."
Comments