Mitt Romney’s campaign is responding to evidence that Bain Capital invested in companies that sent American jobs overseas by accusing the Obama administration of “outsourcing” telemarketing jobs to Omaha, Nebraska.
During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie continued the campaign’s dubious strategy of schooling reporters on the difference between “outsourcing” and “offshoring” jobs, insisting that a Washington Post investigation — which found that Romney’s company “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India” — misunderstood the complicated business jargon.
Gillespie said that he was “not aware” if companies tied to Bain shipped jobs overseas, before adding, “what happened in the story as near I can tell is that the reporter confused the notion of outsourcing.” “Now a lot of American companies outsource, they outsource domestically,” he said, noting that the Obama campaign outsources jobs to Nebraska and CNN contracts out video editing projects.
Pressed by host Candy Crowley, Gillispie seemed to deny that the companies featured in the Post story set up operations in foreign countries, but suggested that some of the firms Bain invested in did, in fact, ship jobs overseas:
CROWLEY: But your statement today that those companies, while he was head of Bain, did not outsource jobs?
GILLESPIE: In the Washington Post article, which is what we went back and looked at, no.
CROWLEY: So those specific companies, but there might be other companies…
GILLESPIE: Those specific companies are the ones we checked because that was the story and again I would encourage you to have the Washington Post reporter on and see if they can demonstrate to you or to the American voters the validity of the headline that was on that story, because like I say it was a breathless headline, but a baseless story.
Watch it:
The Washington Post headline read, “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas” and offered six examples — McKinsey Global Institute, Corporate Software Inc., Stream International Inc., Modus Media Inc., GT Bicycle Inc., SMTC Corp. — of companies that shifted jobs out of America. Gillespie did not provide any evidence to contradict that claim.
Update
Romney advier Eric Fehrnstrom similarly attacked the Obama campaign for “outsourcing” jobs to other places in the United States during an appearance on Face the Nation and claimed that the companies listed in the Washington Post stories were expanding in other countries, not sending American jobs overseas.
