Nutter, Other PA Mayors Send Open Letter to Mitt Romney
In light of a Washington Post report published on Friday detailing Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital — specifically, its role in outsourcing American jobs overseas — five Pennsylvania mayors are lashing out. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawloski, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Erie Mayor Joe Sinnott and Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer recently wrote and signed an open letter to Romney asking him to “reconsider” his plan to send American jobs overseas as president and “instead focus on job creation here at home.”
Specifically, though, the mayors are talking about one of Mitt Romney’s tax-cutting proposals—one which would eliminate U.S. taxes on business’ foreign profits, and, according to the letter, “encourage more companies to send jobs overseas and severely undermine the growth and progress we’ve seen in Pennsylvania since we started adding jobs under President Obama.”
Mayors Nutter and Pawloski held a conference call this afternoon regarding the letter and slammed Romney as a “pioneer” of sending jobs overseas.
“Under Mitt Romney’s leadership, Bain Capital not only profited from shipping American jobs overseas…the fact now is that Bain was a pioneer in this idea of outsourcing,” said Nutter. He called Romney a “serial outsourcer of jobs” and noted Bain was “among the earliest companies investing in and promoting this practice.”
The Washington Post article from which much of this information comes details Romney’s time at Bain in the 90s. The Post found that Bain had helped outsourcing companies invest “venture capital so they could grow and providing management and strategic business advice as they navigated this rapidly developing field” (outsourcing). Additionally, they found: “While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.”
Romney, for his part, has been campaigning on keeping American jobs at home, recently telling Toledo, Ohio fence factory workers: “If I’m president of the United States, [shipping jobs overseas is] going to end.”
The article was recently challenged by the Romney campaign, who today met with the WP to ask for a retraction. Unfortunately for Romney, the Post stated post-meeting, “We are very confident in our reporting” and decided not to retract the story.
On the call, Nutter went onto tout President Obama’s record on jobs as president of the United States and specifically noted the “900 plus jobs” coming to Philadelphia with the renovation at Dilworth Plaza, as well as SEPTA station upgrades that were recently completed.
“Unfortunately, we would reverse all of that progress and much more if Mitt Romney gets his way and that means trouble for working families in this city and other cities across the state,” said Nutter.
I am in no way defending Romney or the practice of shipping jobs overseas. In fact I think it is a disgrace and a monumental disservice to our country. However, it would have been far more effective had Nutter and the other mayors used a different set of jobs created by President Obama as an example. The 900 plus jobs to renovate Dilworth Plaza and Septa stations could NEVER be shipped overseas! It would be rather difficult to ship Dilworth Plaza over to India to be renovated on the cheap and then have it shipped back to Philly all shiny and new.
So you are kind of comparing apples to oranges. Tell me about some new manufacturing jobs that have been created in the US, jobs that we sorely need. And jobs that potentially could be shipped overseas during a Romney presidency.
(Note to you kids out there: skip some lame college degree that you are going to go into crushing debt to acquire and learn a trade. The trades are jobs which by their very nature cannot be shipped overseas)
And to the politicians:
Please stop thinking casinos are the solution. Sure they create a few service jobs. However, it only takes about an 8th grade education to figure out why casinos are not a sustainable solution to our economic troubles.
We need to figure out a way to bring industry and manufacturing back to the states.
[...] PW-Philadelphia Weekly (blog) [...]
Let’s all start bringing jobs back to America One Call and One Vote at a Time.
I think both parties need to be honest on the outsourcing issue affecting USA jobs and futures for our children. A good place to start is the companies donating cash to get their respective candidate in office. Can someone do some research and calculate the amount of positions these companies have offshore? Publicizing this list will bring more light to the outsourcing issue and probably save a few jobs in America. I can’t imagine any candidate would take support from a company pushing overwhelming jobs offshore.
We can also all do our part by requesting a USA representative the next time we are on a call with our bank, credit card, customer service and/or the like. Pushing these call back into the USA has an immediate impact on adding jobs in the USA.
LOL. The state of PA should outsource Nutter.
Leader of a team incapable of performing even the most basic functions of city government competently, like collecting property taxes…
@BJG, don’t kid yourself. You can ship construction jobs overseas. Where do you think the financing comes from? We build it, they own it.
[...] PW-Philadelphia Weekly (blog) [...]