•  Campaign Videos (May 2012) « Obama for America
  

TEXT: 2002 Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts...and he made a lot of promises

Clips from 2002:
Romney: We're going to have a stronger economy because I'm going to be governor...

Romney: I have experience in the private sector...

Romney: I know how jobs are created and how jobs are lost...

Romney: I'm going to work tirelessly as governor to bring more good jobs to Massachusetts...

Romney: I know how to solve a budget problem...

Romney: I stand very clearly for lowering the taxes....

TEXT: Sound familiar?
TEXT: Here's Romney now.

Clips from 2011-12:
Romney: Jobs and the economy is what I know...

Romney: I spent my life in the private sector...

Romney: I know why jobs come and why they go...

Romney: My number one job will be to see that America once again is number one in job creation...

Romney: I will finally get America on track to have a balanced budget...

Romney: I will cut marginal taxes across the board...

TEXT: So what can we expect from a Romney presidency?

Romney: People want to  know what I stand for they can look at my record as governor...

John Barrett, Former Mayor of North Adams, MA: Mitt Romney was not an effective leader in Massachusetts, and the proof is in the pudding.

Jay Kaufman, State Rep. for the 15th Middlesex District: I had worked only under Republican governors and I worked really well with all of the others.  There was really not much working with Mitt Romney.

Rob Dolan, Mayor of Melrose, MA: When Governor Romney became Governor of Massachusetts, many of the issues that our country faces were at our doorstepxxhigh debt, the need for jobs, the need to support the working middle class.  There were great opportunities and there was great hope that Governor Romney could deliver.  He didn't deliver.

TEXT: Jobs

Romney (2002): We need a jobs revolution.  We need to have more jobs in Massachusetts, more good jobs, that's the key to our future.

Karen Spilka, State Sen for the 2nd Middlesex District: There was that promise and hope that Romney would deliver with jobs and grow the economy here in Massachusetts and that did not materialize.

Jack Yunits, former Mayor of Brockton, MA: Massachusetts' growth stopped.  Companies stopped coming; the new jobs were not being created.

Jeffrey Sanchez, State Rep. for the 15th Suffolk/Norfolk District: We knew that we were losing manufacturing jobs and he never found any solutions to try and figure out how do we keep them.

CHART: Under Mitt Romney's governorship, Massachusetts fell to 47 out of 50 in job growth.

By the time Mitt Romney left office we were 47th in the nation in job growth

Rob Dolan, Mayor of Melrose, MA: During Mitt Romney's tenure as governor wages dropped 5-percent in his first two years which really had a very negative effect throughout Massachusetts.

TEXT: Taxes & Fees

Romney (2002): I will fight to keep our tax rate not going up but to keep it where it is, and bring it down by the end of my first term.

Jay Kaufman, State Rep. for the 15th Middlesex District: What we heard from Mitt Romney during the campaign was the no new taxes pledge and he found very quickly once he was in office that he couldn't deliver on any services without having sufficient resources, so he raised our taxes by raising our fees.

Rob Dolan, Mayor of Melrose, MA: But a rose by any other name is absolutely still a rose.  Fees are an increase out of the pockets of every Massachusetts resident.  That's a tax.  Let's call it what it is.

Carl Sciortino, State Rep. for the 34th Middlesex District: Struggling working families, they were paying more under his administration.  They're paying at the Department of Motor Vehicles, they're paying for marriage fees and burial fees...

John Barrett, Former Mayor of North Adams, MA: Every fee that he put in place or increased impacted mainly the average middle income person.

Carl Sciortino, State Rep. for the 34th Middlesex District: The only place that I remember Mitt Romney actually cutting taxes was for the 278 wealthiest families in our state.

TEXT: Debt

Romney (2002): I've indicated what my position is on how to balance the budget, and it's by cutting out waste and inefficiency and taking advantage of great efficiencies that I think we can capture.

Jay Kaufman, State Rep. for the 15th Middlesex District: Under the Romney Administration we accumulated the greatest debt build up of any state in the country.

CHART: Debt added while Romney was governor

That's after a campaign promise to do exactly the opposite.

Carl Sciortino, State Rep. for the 34th Middlesex District: He used debt to pay for annual operations costs.  That's like paying your rent on your credit card and that was Mitt Romney's way of paying for the way we maintained our highways, the way we cleaned our streets.  It was a really flawed way of addressing basic operations, was to go deeper and deeper into debt.

Rob Dolan, Mayor of Melrose, MA: Governor Romney's plan for America right now is the same plan that he sold to the people of Massachusetts in 2002.  Less government, less debt, better business, and less taxes.  The result was the opposite.  More fees, less business, more debt, bigger government here in Boston.

John Barrett, Former Mayor of North Adams, MA: He just did not get the job done.  He just didn't walk the talk.

Carl Sciortino, State Rep. for the 34th Middlesex District: There are times when I watch Mitt Romney saying the exact same things now that he said here in Massachusetts in 2002 in a robotic way that is completely hollow.  It didn't work here so I'm not quite sure why he thinks it would work nationally.

John Barrett, Former Mayor of North Adams, MA: Romney economics doesn't work.  It didn't work in Massachusetts and it's not going to work in Washington.

TEXT: RomneyEconomics.com

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Notes: On May 30 the campaign put out a memo from Obama for America Senior Strategist David Axelrod “Romney Economics: It Didn’t Work Then And It Won’t Work Now” [PDF] outlining these arguments in greater detail. 

According to the June 1 press release on the video:

Mitt Romney claims his business experience will grow our economy, the same claim he made when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. But Romney Economics actually plummeted Massachusetts to 47th out of 50 states in job creation, increased debt and expanded government for the people of Massachusetts.  Don’t take our word for it--just ask his fellow Republicans: Rick Perry said last September that “we created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than he created in four years in Massachusetts” and Rick Santorum said in March that “if Mitt Romney's an economic heavyweight, we're in trouble.”  OFA’s new web video highlights the broad Republican criticism of Romney’s Massachusetts record.
Romney himself said that America should get to know him by looking at his record as governor. So what do we see when we examine the numbers?  Mitt Romney applied the economic philosophy he learned in the private sector to Massachusetts and delivered less than satisfactory results.  Now he’s making the same promises he made when he was running for governor.
As Rick Santorum has already noted, the American economy cannot afford Romney Economics.  It didn't work in Massachusetts. It won't work now.

>The video would be more effective if it included clearly identified independent/objective observers.  The officials shown could well be straight Democratic partisans.  Additionally the male/female balance is out of kilter.  Finally, Rep. Sciortino makes an interesting charge that, "The only place that I remember Mitt Romney actually cutting taxes was for the 278 wealthiest families in our state."

Copyright © 2012 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.