Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday agreed that Mitt Romney is a "job creator," but charged him with creating those jobs overseas.
“Give Mitt Romney credit: He is a job creator. In Singapore. And China. And India,” Biden planned to say at a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa, according to excerpts released by President Obama’s campaign.
Biden is furthering a series of aggressive attacks by the Obama campaign hammering on a recent
report finding that Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that operated by outsourcing American jobs to other countries.
“His whole career, Mitt Romney has looked at the American worker as part of the problem,” Biden said, where he was speaking to labor union workers. “The president and I see you — the American worker — as part of the solution. … We will never outsource our way to greatness.”
The president’s campaign has seized on the outsourcing claims as a way to dig in on Romney’s time as CEO of Bain Capital, a private equity firm. The campaign ran into some criticism from within their own party over previous attacks on the issue, when they focused on the number of businesses that failed compared to those that succeeded after being bought out by Romney’s firm.
But now the campaign has zeroed in on the idea that Romney, who emphasizes knowing how to create jobs and grow the economy on the campaign trail, took jobs from American workers and gave them to foreign workers instead.
Obama blasted Romney as an “outsourcing pioneer” last week, and the campaign shows no signs of letting up on the theme, releasing a trio of TV ads earlier on Tuesday calling Romney the prospective “outsourcer-in-chief.”
The Romney campaign pushed back on the claims by saying that reports confuse outsourcing — where companies hire other companies to perform tasks usually done in-house — with offshoring, where jobs are sent overseas.
Obama, on the campaign trail Monday, mocked Romney’s response, saying the difference between “outsourcing" and “offshoring” doesn’t help American workers.
In a response to Biden's speech, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul charged that Obama has sent "billions of taxpayer dollars to foreign-owned companies and rewarding donors with money from his failed stimulus program."
She also called the campaign's attacks "misleading" and "an effort to distract voters from the president’s disastrous economic record."
Biden also argued that Romney is “out of touch” because he has a Swiss bank account.
“A prospective president with a Swiss bank account and a retirement account in the Cayman Islands,” he said. “Anyone here have a Swiss bank account? Did you ever think the nominee of a major political party running for president would have a Swiss bank account? Talk about out of touch.”
Romney has said his Swiss bank account, which was revealed during a voluntary disclosure of his income taxes, was set up independently by a trustee and has since been closed.
Biden planned to rally the Iowa crowd by emphasizing union and manufacturing jobs, referring to John Deere, a company responsible for many jobs in Iowa and nearby states. The company has a factory in Waterloo.
Biden’s campaign stop in Waterloo is part of a two-day tour the campaign is calling the “Strengthening the Middle Class Tour.”
--Updated at 1:36 p.m.
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