Workers at Sensata Technologies, a business based in Freeport, Illinois, have been protesting Mitt Romney’s campaign stops across the country all summer because the company, which is owned by Bain Capital, is laying off workers in order to hire employees in China. Bain took control of Sensata in 2006; last year, it took over the Freeport plant and announced that it would layoff 165 workers and close it.

Some of the workers, according to Sensata employees, have been forced to train their Chinese replacements, adding insult to the injury that was their looming job loss.

Bain’s role in the layoffs hasn’t been a secret. But given that it took control of Sensata and the plant well after Romney’s departure from the firm, the candidate has thus far steered clear of the controversy, only drawing protests from the workers who want him to step in and stop the plant’s closure. But according to documents detailing Romney’s finances obtained and published yesterday by Gawker, his connection to Sensata is much more direct.

Romney held a direct investment in Sensata through one fund titled “Bain Capital Fund IX, L.P.,” dated December 31, 2009, meaning he has likely financially benefited from Bain’s ownership of the company in the past, and could benefit from the plant’s closure and the outsourcing of the jobs to China. According to his 2011 personal financial disclosure, Romney still holds the Bain Capital fund that contains the Sensata investment.

Romney has a history of outsourcing jobs as the chief executive of Bain Capital. The Washington Post reported in June that under Romney’s leadership Bain “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.” Other companies in which the firm invested sent jobs to Mexico and other low-wage countries around the world.

While that history might be politically toxic, Romney’s proposals wouldn’t stop the outsourcing of American jobs. In fact, his plan to reform the corporate tax code by instituting a territorial tax system would make it easier for American companies to outsource jobs, while at the same time encouraging them to store even more money in offshore tax havens.

Sensata workers, meanwhile, are planning to protest Romney and Bain’s involvement in Sensata at the Republican National Convention next week.

Our guest blogger is Cameron DeHart, an intern at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Republican National Convention Platform Committee met this week to draft the party’s official policy platform. Lost among the headlines about the human life amendment, Arizona-style immigration policies, and other radical policies, the committee included a plank that calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve System.

Accountability is no doubt an important aspect of effective and democratic government, but the GOP’s intentions are less noble than they appear. Conservatives are upset that the Federal Reserve has acted in the past, and may act again in the near future, to use monetary policy to help Americans return to work and hasten the recovery. The recent Audit the Fed movement is less about holding the Fed accountable, and more about bullying the Fed away from helping the economy.

This policy is a radical departure from the party’s own tradition of respecting the Federal Reserve’s independence. In 1980, the Republican national platform read clearly: “The independence of the Federal Reserve System must be preserved.” The Audit the Fed platform plank disregards this tradition, and instead allows conservatives to attack monetary policymakers for helping the economy.

Also on the 1980 platform: “Unfortunately, Mr. Carter and the Democratic Congress seek to derail our nation’s money creation policies by taking away the independence of the Federal Reserve Board.” The GOP accused President Carter and Congress of pressuring the Fed to pursue policies that would help unemployed Americans, a goal that was added to the Fed’s statute in 1978 by the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. Conservative sought to fix this problem by telling the Presidents and the Democratic Party: “Leave the Fed alone”.

During the Obama administration, however, the GOP has sung a very different tune. As the Fed has taken steps, such as quantitative easing and Operation Twist, to boost the economy in recent years, conservatives have raised the specter of inflation over and over again. But, as ThinkProgress has demonstrated, these fears are overblown. Conservatives are so afraid that the Fed’s policies will cause hyperinflation, or worse for them, actually help the economy, that they have taken unprecedented steps to obstruct the Fed’s policymaking authority. From writing intimidating letters to Chairman Ben Bernanke to stalling Fed Board nominees, the modern Republican Party has done all it can to sabotage the Fed’s ability to aid the recovery.

The recent changes to the national platform are not the only anti-recovery policies the GOP has unleashed against the Fed. Mitt Romney said earlier this month that policymakers should not do more to stimulate the economy. As ThinkProgress’ Jeff Spross detailed, Paul Ryan’s radical views on monetary policy would cause even more harm to our economy than the Fed’s own reticence to act. In 2008, for example, Paul Ryan argued that the Fed should only focus on controlling inflation and forget about unemployment.

The Fed said earlier this month that the unemployment rate would decline slowly over the next few years, but the GOP remains committed to not wanting to do anything about it.

Yearning for a return to the gold standard — the monetary system in which paper dollars are backed by, and can be exchanged for, a fixed amount of gold — has been on the rise in the Republican Party. Ron Paul’s long quest for a new gold standard reached new prominence with the latest presidential campaign, and several of his fellow GOP candidates attended events lauding idea. Major GOP politicians have either endorsed a gold standard or stepped up to the edge of doing so, and the idea has popped up in state party platforms. Now The Financial Times reports that the gold standard is on the verge of becoming national Republican policy:

Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold… A commission would have no power except to make recommendations, but Mr Fieler said it would provide a chance to educate politicians and the public about the merits of a return to gold. “We’re not going to go from a standing start to the gold standard,” he said.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan created a similar commission to look into the gold standard, though it settled on supporting the current monetary system. The Republicans’ 1980 platform blamed inflation on the abandonment of the gold standard, and their 1984 platform said “the gold standard may be a useful mechanism.”

Unfortunately for the GOP, there are huge policy problems with a gold standard. As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pointed out, there isn’t enough gold to back the supply of money the economy actually needs. Worse, a gold standard would shackle monetary policy’s ability to respond to economic downturns. Interest rates could not be lowered to combat recessions or high unemployment. Instead, they would be driven by the price fluctuations of the gold supply, regardless of the needs of the broader economy.

The argument for a gold standard doesn’t make sense historically, either. After the Great Depression, there was a very strong correlation between when countries abandoned their gold standards and when their recoveries began. And what followed the complete end of the U.S. gold standard in 1971 was the longest period of low and stable inflation in modern times:

When President Obama said earlier this year that the “private sector was doing fine,” Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign jumped on the comment as a sign that Obama was out of touch with reality. Romney, however, made a similar remark last night at a fundraiser in Minnesota, telling the donors that “Big business is doing fine in many places,” as CBS news reports:

“We’ve got to make it easier for small businesses,” Romney said to a group of 300 at the Lafayette Club in this Minneapolis suburb. “Big business is doing fine in many places – they get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses.“

Romney’s comments aren’t incorrect — if anything, they are understated. America’s corporations are raking in record profits and their chief executives are making more money than ever (American workers, unfortunately, haven’t shared in the prosperity). But if Romney knows that big businesses are doing fine, it’s worth wondering why he feels the need to shower them with massive tax cuts and make it easier for them to utilize the offshore tax havens he mentioned.

Romney’s tax plan gives corporations more than a trillion dollars in tax cuts — more than $900 billion in cuts to the corporate tax rate and the rest through reforms that shift America to a territorial tax system that would make it easier for corporations to outsource jobs and store their money in offshore tax havens. That plan, just like Romney’s tax cut for the wealthy, would be paid for by American workers and could cost middle class families as much as $4,000 a year.

And while Romney insists that “we’ve got to make it easier for small businesses,” he ignores the fact that the very offshore tax havens he says are helping big businesses — the same ones he has used and would make it easier for them to use too — are hurting the smaller companies. America loses more than $60 billion to corporate tax dodging each year, and in 2010, making up that revenue cost the average small business $2,116, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. And given that many small business owners are also middle class taxpayers, Romney’s plan will cost them even more money by making them pay for his tax cuts for corporations and the rich.