Obama won’t say sorry to Mitt
17 July 2012 10:38 AM GMT
US President Barack Obama has refused to apologise for accusing Mitt Romney of outsourcing jobs while in charge of Bain Capital, a charge his Republican opponent has dismissed as ‘false’.
The US presidential race has taken an acrimonious turn in the past week as the wealthy Republican candidate endures a Democratic onslaught over the Bain issue and for squirreling many of his millions away in offshore tax havens.
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, called Friday for an apology for the intensifying character assassination by the Obama campaign and said personal attacks against him were ‘beneath the dignity of the presidency’.
‘We won’t be apologising,’ Obama said, according to the transcript of an interview on Sunday. ‘Mr Romney claims he’s Mr Fix-It for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely, legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.’
The manner in which Romney acquired his fortune at the helm of Bain, the Boston-based investment firm he founded, has emerged as a major issue during this campaign as Obama tries to paint him as out of touch with ordinary Americans before the November vote.
Romney maintains he quit the day-to-day running of Bain in February 1999 and was not making the decisions when companies it worked with subsequently laid off US workers and ‘outsourced’ jobs to plants in Mexico and China.
But a Boston Globe report on Thursday revealed that filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission still listed him as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2003. ‘As the head of a private equity firm his job was to maximise profits and help investors. There is nothing wrong with that,’ Obama said in his interview with Virginia’s WAVY-TV.
On the other hand that company also was investing in companies that were called by the Washington Post: ‘the pioneers of outsourcing'.
The Romney campaign sought to deflect the barrage of attacks on the candidate’s business career by framing his departure from Bain Capital as a ‘patriotic’ act to save the Salt Lake City Olympics.
The US presidential race has taken an acrimonious turn in the past week as the wealthy Republican candidate endures a Democratic onslaught over the Bain issue and for squirreling many of his millions away in offshore tax havens.
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, called Friday for an apology for the intensifying character assassination by the Obama campaign and said personal attacks against him were ‘beneath the dignity of the presidency’.
‘We won’t be apologising,’ Obama said, according to the transcript of an interview on Sunday. ‘Mr Romney claims he’s Mr Fix-It for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely, legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.’
The manner in which Romney acquired his fortune at the helm of Bain, the Boston-based investment firm he founded, has emerged as a major issue during this campaign as Obama tries to paint him as out of touch with ordinary Americans before the November vote.
Romney maintains he quit the day-to-day running of Bain in February 1999 and was not making the decisions when companies it worked with subsequently laid off US workers and ‘outsourced’ jobs to plants in Mexico and China.
But a Boston Globe report on Thursday revealed that filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission still listed him as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2003. ‘As the head of a private equity firm his job was to maximise profits and help investors. There is nothing wrong with that,’ Obama said in his interview with Virginia’s WAVY-TV.
On the other hand that company also was investing in companies that were called by the Washington Post: ‘the pioneers of outsourcing'.
The Romney campaign sought to deflect the barrage of attacks on the candidate’s business career by framing his departure from Bain Capital as a ‘patriotic’ act to save the Salt Lake City Olympics.
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