During the month of July, Barack Obama relentlessly attacked Mitt Romney with bogus charges of outsourcing American jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital. Hypocrisy has become standard-operating-procedure for the Obama White House and campaign team. However, some new information suggests that if Obama really wanted to rail against the big outsourcer he should have been talking to the man in his mirror.
The Obama campaign spent millions on television ads accusing Romney of being the "outsourcer-in-chief." But, when scrutinized by political truth-testers across the nation, the accusations proved to be false.
Glenn Kessler, The Fact Checker at the Washington Post, found the charges to be "misleading, unfair and untrue."
FactCheck.org investigated and found "no evidence to support the claim that Romney – while he was running Bain Capital – shipped American jobs overseas."
Now comes the results of analysis of one of Obama's favored companies, General Motors, by Paul Roderick Gregory, research fellow at the Hoover Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Houston.
Writing in Forbes this week, Gregory noted that at a recent Colorado campaign stop, "President Obama praised his GM bailout as an example for American industry." Obama went on to suggest that what he did for GM and the auto industry, he could to for others. "I don't want to outsource. I want to insource," he said.
But, as Gregory discovered, if Obama wants to make that claim, he'd better find a different example than General Motors.
"We need to look no further than General Motors’ own figures to learn that GM outsources almost two thirds of its jobs overseas. Less than one in five GM vehicles are manufactured in the United States."
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"To be exact: GM’s December 31, 2011 annual report shows General Motors of North America accounting for 98,000 of the 207,000 GM jobs worldwide. But 12,000 of these jobs are in Canada and 11,500 are in Mexico. Accordingly, GM has 74,500 jobs in the United States and 122,500 abroad, even after Obama’s touted surge in Detroit jobs. Almost two thirds of GM’s jobs are in other countries."
Oops! Whatever you might think of the auto bailouts, for every job Obama "saved-or-created" at GM inside the USA, there were two more jobs that were outsourced.
Gregory quotes a recent GM press release that lauds the "7 million vehicles, 20 million engines, and 4 million transmissions" built in Mexico. GM credits the decades of investment south of the US border for "turning Mexico into a prosperous nation for the benefit of millions of families." The same press release also brags about GM's "upcoming investments in its Mexican plants." To emphasize the commitment to the Mexican economy, GM contrasts the billion dollars in Mexico to a relatively small $100 million in Rochester, New York.
General Motors has also made substantial investments in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. According to Gregory, the company's annual report contains the following statement. "We will continue to grow our business under the Baojin, Jiefang, and Wuling brands. We operate in Chinese markets through a number of joint ventures and maintaining good relations with our joint venture partners, which are affiliated with the Chinese government, is an important part of our Chinese growth strategy."
That companies would go where markets are good and costs are lower is all too obvious to everyone except Obama. However, in nearly four years during a deep and stubborn recession, Obama dramatically increased regulation that increased cost as well as uncertainty in the market place. Further, he signed legislation to implement a plethora of new taxes and is campaigning on a plan to raise existing tax rates even further. And, as an expensive sidebar of his auto bailout, Obama stuck the taxpayer with more than a $20 billion pay off to his union buddies.
ObamaCare alone will impose 20 new taxes – 21 if you count the insurance penalty/tax/mandate. The legislation drives up, not down, insurance premium costs as well as adding millions in regulatory compliance cost to American businesses.
Dodd-Frank is a 2300 page regulatory morass that "will require no fewer than 243 new format rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies," according to the Wall Street Journal. "Whatever else this (legislation) will do, it will not make lending cheaper or credit more readily available," concluded the WSJ editors.
Additionally, Obama has repeatedly pandered to his pals in big labor driving up production costs to business and debt burdens for the taxpayers. Specifically, according to recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation,
"We estimate that the Administration redistributed $26.5 billion more to the UAW (United Auto Workers Union) than it would have received had it been treated as it usually would in bankruptcy proceedings. Taxpayers lost between $20 billion and $23 billion on the auto programs. Thus, the entire loss to the taxpayers from the auto bailout comes from the funds diverted to the UAW."
Somebody has been encouraging more jobs to go overseas alright – and, it's Barack Obama.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand those realities. That's why they are proposing a plan that will reduce tax rates and excessive regulation, including repeal of ObamaCare. "Government should be an ally, not the enemy, of business," says Gov. Romney. He and Ryan are proposing a plan to make the U.S. energy independent by 2020 using all of America's enormous resources including oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and other renewables.
Romney's plan would create 12 million jobs in the next four years and economic growth of 4% per year, dwarfing the Obama's anemic 1.5% GDP in the second quarter of 2012 and new job creation that is barely half of current population increase.
An economist friend of mine teased me a while back when he said, "I think I know the date that the economy will turn around." I took the bait and eagerly asked, "When?" "November 6," he said grinning ear-to-ear. Fast-forwarding the calendar in my head, I soon recalled that was Election Day.
America is just waiting for a reason to believe again. When we put the four misguided years of damaging policies of Barack Obama behind us and replace it with common-sense pro-growth ideas, America's comeback will begin and this economy will come roaring back. To be great and growing again, the American economy just needs some R & R – Romney and Ryan.
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