Obama Broadly Paints Romney As An Overseas Outsourcer

In a revamp of a previous campaign tactic, Barack Obama has decided to try and turn America against Romney because he outsourced jobs while he was the head of Bain Capital, and as the Governor of Massachusetts.

Politifact has already debunked the Massachusetts claim by calling it a half-truth.  But, I think, given the facts, they're being overly lenient with Obama.  When Romney became its Governor, the State of Massachusetts had already contracted with Citigroup to process debit cards in support of the state's food stamp program.  In setting up customer service support for the program, Citigroup created a call center in India.  This was not unique.  At the time, 43 of our 50 states were involved in outsourcing certain services overseas.  But, let's be clear, neither Romney nor the State of Massachusetts outsourced the jobs to India; the contractor, Citigroup, did. Where the Obama campaign thinks they have Romney on the hook for outsourcing, is in regard to his 2005 veto of a bill that would forbid any state contractors from outsourcing.  Romney did it because the State budget couldn't afford premium, U.S.-only contracts; resulting in millions of extra taxpayer expenses. To anyone's knowledge, no jobs were actually outsourced since the Romney veto. And, the India call center?  It was shutdown in a new contract with jobs outsourced (from Mass.) to Utah.

Now, it is true that some companies that Bain was involved with while Romney was the chief did outsource jobs to both China and India.   But, so did most all of the Fortune 500 companies of this nation.  In fact, Obama's General Motors makes its Chevy Camaro in Canada and the GMC Sierra in Mexico.  And, oh yes,  Obama handed the American Chrysler Corporation over to the Italian company, Fiat. How long do you think it will be before Fiat starts making the most of the Chrysler parts (or, cars) in Italy?

On the Bain/Romney outsourcing, Obama and his surrogates should really back off.  That's because several of Obama's stimulus programs used products and parts that were made in China; and, consequently, created Chinese jobs.  Take, for example, a $2 billion program in the Obama stimulus package to build enough wind farms to support 2.4 million American homes.  The wind turbines, themselves, weren't built here.  Instead, they were built in China; creating 6000 Chinese jobs.  In the U.S., only about a couple of hundred jobs were created in installing all those Chinese-built wind turbines.   So, in essence, Obama, too, is an outsourcer!

The wind turbine story can be found at: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/wind-power-equal-job-power/story?id=9759949#.T-oX8fWDpkg