Today SEIU, the UAW and other groups sent a letter to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics urging the agency to make Gov. Romney immediately disclose his stock holdings or divest them.
Gov. Romney is in violation of the Ethics in Government Act because he has failed to disclose his stock holdings in his filings with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The American people have a right to know about the companies that Gov. Romney is invested in.
What little we do know about Gov. Romney's investments gives us an idea of what a Romney economy would look like -- and it's not good for working people.
From press reports we know that Gov. Romney is invested in companies that shut down factories in the U.S. and outsource those good jobs to China and Mexico, like Sensata Technologies and Delphi Corp.
The Romney economy means outsourcing more American jobs, more profits for private equity owners, and more people put out of work in communities across the country. Mitt Romney is hiding his investments because he doesn't want the American people to know what a Romney Economy would look like.
Lately, Romney has actually pretended he will "get tough" on China. How do you get tough on China when you're making profits from the outsourcing of good American jobs to China? Just ask the workers at the Sensata plant in Freeport, Ill. if they think Mitt Romney is tough on China. He hasn't lifted a finger to help save their jobs from being shipped to China by Bain Capital, the company that Mitt Romney created and is still heavily invested in.
How can Mitt Romney be tough on China when he led Bain Capital to invest in Global-Tech in the '90s? That company helped Sunbeam outsource their production of appliances to China. Mitt Romney visited their factory in China and came back talking about the sweatshop conditions there. Then he invested in the company.
How many other Sensatas and Global Techs are out there? We don't know, because Gov. Romney refuses to disclose his stock holdings to the American people.
Gov. Romney has a so-called "blind trust," but his trust doesn't meet the requirements for the federally qualified blind trust exception to the Ethics in Government Act. Gov. Romney himself has called blind trusts "an age-old ruse."
Romney has been hiding behind his confidentiality agreements with his partners at Bain Capital, taking advantage of an informal exception that's not actually found in the law. Gov. Romney is putting his relationship with Bain Capital ahead of his relationship with the American people.
Mitt Romney's failure to disclose the companies that he owns stock in has led SEIU to join with the UAW and the good government groups such Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Public Citizen, Public Campaign, People for the American Way and The Social Equity Group in today's complaint letter to the Office of Government Ethics. We hope the Office takes immediate action.
Gov. Romney must come clean with the American people, so they will know what a Romney economy will look like. Gov. Romney, it's time to disclose or divest.