Biden Compares Romney’s Economics to Racehorse - East Idaho News
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Biden Compares Romney’s Economics to Racehorse

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GETTY P 102610 VicePresidentJoeBiden?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1337762043439Joe Raedle/Getty Images(KEENE, N.H.) — Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Mitt Romney’s economic policies bring to mind Kentucky Derby and Preakness champ I’ll Have Another, “except the horse is a real winner.”

On the stump in Keene, N.H., Tuesday afternoon, Biden said the economic values Romney would bring to the White House were displayed during his tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital and manifest on the campaign trail, particularly in his calls to roll back Democrats’ health care overhaul, Wall Street reforms and other consumer protections.

“The governor’s philosophy seems to be whatever the last administration does, let’s do it and do more.  Literally, think about anything new he has suggested that deviates from the policies that got us into this hole except more of the same,” Biden said, referring to the administration of George W. Bush.

“Ladies and gentlemen, these are the guys that ran us into the ditch.  And they begin to sound a little like the horse who just won the Preakness, I’ll Have Another.  Except the horse is a real winner.”

Biden told a crowd of students and blue collar workers at the Keene State College rally that Romney’s private business experience meant “making money regardless of the consequences for the workers, the companies they acquire and the communities that got wasted.”

The Republican nominee’s Bain Capital “trump card” is a rational argument, but is not a qualification for the presidency, he said.

“Making money for your investors, which Romney did very well, is not the president’s job,” Biden said.  “When you’re president, your job is to see to it that companies can make a profit — but not at everyone’s expense.

“It’s not the same job requirement.  So it’s totally legitimate for the president to point this out,” he added.

The Obama campaign, claiming not to attack the private equity sector as a whole, has mounted an aggressive effort to define Romney as an out-of-touch corporate raider more interested in profits than creating jobs.

Romney, who has made his Bain Capital experience the focus of his bid for the nation’s highest office, says his investments created thousands of jobs and that attacks on his record amount to a “distraction” from President Obama’s shortcomings on the economy.

“Vice President Biden today claimed the Obama administration’s economic progress ‘cannot be denied,’” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.  “He must not be talking to the millions of Americans who are suffering from declining incomes, fewer jobs, and skyrocketing household costs in the Obama economy.”

While Biden conceded there’s “much more to do” on the economy, he raised the stories of layoffs, eliminated pensions and devastated communities in the wake of Bain investments as reminders of the consequences of Romney’s “economic philosophy.”

The cases of Ampad, GST Steel and others once owned by Bain and since bankrupt have been the focus of an online and TV ad campaign by Obama and the Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

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