Bain Focus Misses Larger Point: Bain Experience Did Not Help Romney Create Jobs as Governor

Willard Mitt Romney's major claim to the presidency is that, as an experienced, successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs as chief executive. This has prompted close scrutiny of his business, Bain Capital.

That focus misses the larger point: whatever his Bain experience was, Romney's job creation record as governor was, to borrow a term from Newt Gingrich, pathetic.

Bain Capital was one of many private equity funds that engaged in a wide range of activities to make money for its investors. It was not focused on creating jobs in the economy, but rather saw opportunities to start, purchase, merge, restructure, close, offshore, sell and otherwise manipulate companies to make nice profits for themselves.

That Willard has not a single pang of conscience about what he did because it was posited as how capitalism works is a reasonable issue for a person aspiring to be president to address. How an individual reacts to it has more to do with one's philosophical views of life, society and the economy that it does to Romney's particular role in it.

But there is a bigger and simpler conclusion to be drawn. Romney espouses his business experience as "proof" that he is the one to foster job creation and economic growth. Even accepting everything Romney claims about his activities at Bain Capital at face value, Romney demonstrated already that that experience did not translate into creating jobs as a governor -- Massachusetts under Romney was 47th in the nation in job creation.

Whatever Romney did at Bain, and whatever Bain did, it certainly did not make Romney a job-creating governor. There are those who may claim that, as 47th in the nation, his Bain experience may have made him even worse as governor for job creation... but, there is really no need to go there.

The point is this: Romney's entire premise that, as a businessman, he knows how to create jobs as chief executive in government, is phony.

But, then again, so is everything else about Mitt Romney phony.

 

Follow Paul Abrams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pabrams2001

Comments

[Ankan]

08:19 AM on 01/11/2012

Thanks for sharing all this information..

[Robert SF]

06:41 AM on 01/11/2012

Romney saying he knows how to create jobs because he was at Bain Capital is like Sarah Palin saying she has foreign relations experience since she can see Russia from her living room window.

[SeekingClarity]

04:05 AM on 01/11/2012

"Willard Mitt Romney's major claim to the presidency is that, as an experienced, successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs as chief executive."

And yet CEOs of many companies have been finding ways to eliminate jobs for several decades, outsourcing, off-shoring, installing perma-temps,and automating. A president has to find practical ways to keep as many people as possible working at a living wage. A CEO wants to hire as few people as possible.

Moreover, a society is not a company. There may be some areas of overlap of organizational principles, but scope, mission, and responsibilities are very different.

[Peter Combs]

12:37 AM on 01/11/2012

actually, by the time Romney left office in Massachusetts unemployment had dropped by 21% and we ranked nationally in the top ten states in job creation. We also had a 2 Billion Dollar cash surplus for the first time in history...

Bain also started Staples....under Romney's guidance. Its seems to me thay have created a lot of jobs.

[CenTexDem]

06:59 PM on 01/10/2012

Tax the 15 percenters in the top 10% to 20% of households the same effective total tax rate of at least 35% that the lower 80% of working families and small businesses have to pay from income needed for a basic "middle class" standard of living. That would go a long way, along with the elimination of government subsidies and tax deductions and credits for the rich and the elimination of waste and fraud in the defense budget, to pay down the federal debt and give the job creating lower 80% of small businesses needed tax rate cuts formerly reserved for and not needed by the rich and a real "opportunity" to succeed and prosper. This intractable Republican Party ideology of protection at all cost of the refusal on the part of those making more than middle class income to equitably share in the sacrifice of paying down the federal debt and bringing needed tax relief to middle class families and small businesses is the most egregious "entitlement" in our society today.

[CenTexDem]

06:56 PM on 01/10/2012

If Mitt Romney truly wanted a tax system that pays down the federal debt, most of it created by GOP administrations to benefit their wealthy and corporate elite special interest groups or, in the case of President Obama, forced upon him by the decade of GOP deregulated greed that created the systemic Great Recession, then George Will and his GOP presidential hopefuls should start by demanding that those making more than middle class income pay an effective total tax rate commensurate with the total tax bill paid by working families and small businesses of the "middle class". Using the epitomy of an American trying to succeed in this "opportunity society", an independent small business owner making less than $100,000 in net income per year from his business before taxes who has to pay 13.1 percent in payroll taxes and an effective tax rate of at least 15% income tax on such pre-tax net income and from that post-tax income sales taxes and property taxes typically in the amount of at least $10,000 per year for an effective total tax rate of at least 35 percent, and therefore an equitable effective income tax rate on the top 10% to 20% of income earners on their income exceeding $100,000, including long term capital gains, dividend, and hedge fund compensation income, needs to be around that same 35 percent rate.

[CenTexDem]

06:54 PM on 01/10/2012

The "entitlements" that the Republican Party should but does not oppose should be the more than $500 billion in annual federal government welfare for the rich and corporate elite in the form of subsidies and tax credits, the more than $200 billion in annual waste and fraud in the defense budget, and a tax system that allows the very wealthy to often pay as little as 15 percent in taxes because most of their income is from dividends, long term capital gains, or hedge fund compensation while 80% of working families and small businesses are denied the "opportunity" to prosper because in comparison they are forced to pay in whole or in part the 15.1 percent in payroll taxes, the sales taxes, the property taxes, the franchise taxes, etc. and, at rates often far greater than 15 percent, income taxes on that "middle class" income of $50,000 to $123,322 per year. This harshly regressive tax bill of all taxes of every kind paid on at least the lower 80% of households and small businesses seriously impedes their "opportunity" to succeed. This is the very tax system starting with Reagan that, along with GOP efforts to deregulate and even legalize greed for their special interest groups at every turn, has caused the greatest disparity of distribution of wealth and income since immediately prior to the Great Depression that has almost reached the breaking point in imposing almost insurmoutable economic barriers on the ability of the lower 80% to prosper.

[CenTexDem]

06:52 PM on 01/10/2012

Romney and his GOP cohorts falsely argue that they seek an "opportunity society" and that Barak Obama seeks an "entitlement society". What Will and company and too many GOP primary voters fail to realize is that social security and medicare benefits are not "entitlements". They are paid for with taxes withheld from the earnings of workers making less than $110,100 per year with the tax withheld, other than income tax, being matched by their employers. These are safety net benefits paid for almost solely by the lower 80% of income households in America from income needed for a basic decent standard of living which is at least $50,000 in Houston and about $123,322 in Manhattan. These so-called "entitlements" are supposed to be guaranteed by virtue of the pact still honored by the great majority of Americans (but not the GOP or their presidential candidates) that arose out of the Great Depression as to social security and out of the pervasive poverty and lack of health care of the elderly during the social strife of the sixties as to medicare. Ignored by the very members of Congress they elect, this great majority of Americans in the richest country in the world simply want and are willing to pay taxes for this basic safety net so that our elderly who paid taxes all their working life often from less than fair wages will have the "opportunity" to live their last days in basic comfort and dignity.

[CenTexDem]

06:49 PM on 01/10/2012

Romney says that the issue is protecting the "free market" - he fails to realize that in the real world there is nothing free about a market where you are allowed to use legalized scams to needless merge companies for an obscene profit the cost of which is permanent job layoffs and decreased industry wide competition. The Dems are more likely than the GOP to fight harmful mergers by the way. Hopefully the press will get the real numbers on how many people lost their jobs due to his mergers for his personal gain and how much he made from needlessly imposing this misery on American workers.

[SeekingClarity]

03:24 AM on 01/11/2012

Romney says that the issue is protecting the "free market"

The thing about a "free market" is that, like a free country, it is a judiciously applied framework of law, not anarchy, that enables it to be free; as the song says, our liberty in law.

Before reforms, the stock market was nakedly manipulated by wealthy players, and monopolies suppressed competition (even worse than today). With even a halfway serious look at history, it is crazy to let the nation slip back in that direction.

[LFox6]

03:54 PM on 01/10/2012

Government's job is not to create jobs. Government's job is to administer, organize, and enforce a public policy which would foster job creation.

Not the same thing, so this article is a total fail. Of the 70% of companies that were brought back from the edge of bankruptcy during Romney's tenure, and which were still solvent and healthy upon his departure, it surely can be said that Bain's investment in time and money certainly fostered if not job creation - job retention. Think how many of people in those 70% kept their homes, jobs, financial futures, due to Bain's investment.

[TheCommons]

11:35 PM on 01/10/2012

Government's job here in the United States is defined in our constitution.

[Peddler]

02:17 PM on 01/10/2012

But, then again, so is everything else about Mitt Romney phony------you answered your own doubts!

[Soft Robot]

02:16 PM on 01/10/2012

Fair enough. How many jobs did Obama 'create' before becoming President?

[Peter Combs]

12:39 AM on 01/11/2012

not one....ROmney also backed and financed a lot of companys, as well as keeping solvent companies..like Staples for example...

[CoachJM]

01:59 PM on 01/10/2012

Paul,

So, if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that government is NOT a business!?!?!?!?!

Whoa, that changes EVERYTHING.

Kind of makes sense when you think about it.

After all, the essential purpose of a business is to generate profits for its owners while the essential purpose of government is to "...promote the general welfare..." of its citizens.

Two radically different objectives.

JM

[MThomasNC]

01:49 PM on 01/10/2012

First of all - a business CEO as president is the worst thing possible because their mindset is increasing the 'bottom line' for the investors only no matter who gets hurt.

I remember the 1980s and early 1990s, it was corporate raiders, mergers and acquisitions galore. No business was safe from these looters - go in buy company, restructure, cut jobs and send work oversees. GOP under Reagan and Bush41 did this with sanctions from US Chamber of Commerce, IMF, World Bank - looting USA of its manufacturing base creating a service economy. The American workers lost out in the 1980s and early 1990s

Mitt Romney was right there in the thick of things as a looter and raider. Thank you Newt for bringing all this GOP stink out in the open. If a democrat had done it, the conservatives would have plummeted them to death.

Thank you, Newt for exposing the ugly underbelly free market enterprise brought to us conservatives.

[debblack]

12:41 PM on 01/10/2012

Mitt keeps saying he understands how the economy works. I believe he does, for corporations and the wealthy. They will do just fine in a Mitt Presidency; he could care less about the rest of us.He proves it everyday with his "gaffes". He will destroy every social saftey net that has kept our Seniors from living in poverty, that have helped feed families when someone looses their job-thanks to Mitt-he will destroy healthcare as we know it; end public education so only the wealthy will have access; women's rights will be a thing of the past, along with homosexual equality; all in order to keep giving more and more benfits to the already wealthy and the corporations; and create a religious government. Republicans can not become the permant majority ruling party, as is their stated goal, if they allow the majority of people to be free and equal.