Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Romney Camp Responds to Obama's Stop in Poland
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asserted Friday that the latest job report provided further evidence that President Barack Obama’s policies haven’t worked, and the economy has stalled.
The government reported the unemployment rate remained at 8.2% in June, and just 80,000 jobs were created.
“The second quarter of this year was the worst quarter of job creation in two years,” spokeswoman Kate Meriwether said in an email following the president’s visit to Poland yesterday. “The private sector is not ‘doing fine,’ as President Obama famously said. Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a series of devastating economic news for American families and businesses.”
In response to the president’s defense yesterday of his intervention in the automobile industry, which several local leaders and workers credit with helping to save jobs at the General Motors Lordstown plant, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s campaign said Romney, “a Michigan native and the son of a car guy,” has “always believed that a strong auto industry is an essential component of the nation’s economy.”
During his speech yesterday, Obama said, “You had some folks let’s let Detroit go bankrupt,” referring to a newspaper column Romney wrote in November 2008, in which he argued against GM and Chrysler taking federal help, which has since provided fodder for Democrats. Earlier this year Romney said he “would take a lot of credit” for promoting a managed bankruptcy for the automakers, although it’s widely believed that they would not have survived bankruptcy without the federal help he advocated against because the private capital markets had frozen.
The campaign said Romney “has a plan that will help the auto industry move forward in into a new era of innovation and dominance,” while Obama’s “hostility to job creators has led him to believe that he can make investment decisions better than the private sector can.”
The campaign also sought to distinguish the health-care reform Romney supported as Massachusetts governor from the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was recently largely upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. “Obamacare is bad law, bad policy, and bad for the economy,” the campaign said. “Massachusetts is a very different situation because it is a state-level issue and the provision there was, and is, a penalty. Mitt Romney has always and consistently been opposed to a federal individual mandate. He feels President Obama’s one-size-fits-all takeover of health care is disastrous for our economy and our nation. He believes state should have the authority and flexibility to design innovative solutions that fit the unique needs of their citizens.”
Obama staunchly defended the Affordable Care Act Friday, receiving the loudest cheers during his campaign stop at Dobbins School.
“I make no apologies for it,” the president said. “We're going to keep it moving forward. It was the right thing to do two years ago, it's the right thing to do now, and we're going to keep moving.”
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.