Mitt Romney's biggest talking point leading up to the 2012 presidential election is that he has been a successful business man who has made it to the top of the private sector. While there is no denying that Mitt Romney has found considerable success in business, the real question is whether someone with Romney's background is what the United States really needs.
Mitt Romney was hired by Bain and Company in 1977 and later became their CEO. By 1984, along with friends T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss, Mitt Romney helped form a spin off company called Bain Capital. In order to completely keep themselves independent, Bain Capital was not affiliated with Bain and Company. The primary objective for Bain Capital was to make a profit for the executives within the company and the shareholders who had invested in them. Bain Capital is a private equity firm that would invest in smaller companies and increase their short term profits by laying off workers and closing factories. The money they gained by cutting back was used to borrow additional money to pay dividends to the shareholders who had invested in Bain. When the company could no longer provide enough money to pay its shareholders the amount they were expected, Bain would lay off more workers or eventually force the company to close. As the conservative New York Post reports, Romney "made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers."
As the Boston Globe points out: "The primary objective, of course, was to make money. That meant every job couldn't be saved. Some strategies, such as a roll-ups, are designed at the outset to cut jobs." Mitt Romney's claim of creating 100,000 jobs has been debated, and Romney himself can't stay consistent with his own words. According to the Washington Post, many of the jobs that were created were done with small Bain investments through companies like Staples and Sports Authority that grew large long after the initial Bain investment. Many of the jobs that were created happened well after Romney had left the company and the number of jobs created is still not known.
Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to help finance the Winter Olympic games and was elected the 70th Governor of Massachusetts in November of 2002. Outside the private sector, Romney had a mixed tenure as Governor. Romney ran a surplus during his first two years in office, but deficits after that. Romney cut over $1.5 billion dollars in spending, including $140 million from higher education which forced schools to raise tuition by over 60% over the next four years. During his time in office, job creation in Massachusetts fell to 47th out of 50 states in the country.
With a mixed record in public office, Romney's private sector background must be looked at as a foundation for how he would run the country. Mitt Romney and other conservatives like the idea of a business person getting the economy on track faster than it is. The problem with this notion is that while a businesses prime objective is to make money, the motive of the president of the United States is to make sure that everyone in the country has a fair shot at success. While a company like Bain Capital can legally invest in a business, layoff workers and make a profit, the leader of the United States shouldn't follow that model.
In a time where the current economy is just starting to get back on track, the last thing that it needs are cuts to programs that millions of Americans rely on. If Mitt Romney is elected in November and follows the same path he did in the private sector, the United States is in for some very difficult times. The national debt is over $15.6 trillion dollars, but getting that debt down shouldn't come at the expense of the low and middle class. The American people are the real job creators, and through American investment by reasonable taxation, the economy will continue to move forward without the austerity obsession of cutting programs for the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich.
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