Together with our 32 member unions, we just looked at a preliminary snapshot of the record of Mitt Romney. The findings unearthed are ugly – that is, if you live among the 99 percent in America.
We’re also mining through Santorum’s record (which also isn’t pretty), and we haven’t bothered digging through Newt’s record – not only because he’s fading faster than our middle-class, but because he is already the poster child for special interests.
If you like Scott Walker, you’ll love Mitt Romney.
Mitt used the old playbook by trying to redefine state employees as “managers.” Why? Because that would have taken away the union voice of 60,000 workers in his state.
Mitt never met a wage he didn’t want to cut, a union member he didn’t want to silence or a pension benefit he didn’t want to defund or downsize. The record is stuffed with repeated attempts by Romney to undermine his own state workers.
Mitt was even for outsourcing work of taxpayer-funded agencies. Do we really want a president more focused on job creation in India and Russia than here at home? Duh! Go poll the voters on that question. I’m sure the average American sits around wondering why his or her tax dollars aren’t used to fuel job creation overseas.
You’ll be shocked to learn that as a candidate in 2002 Mitt said he would raise the minimum wage and even index it for inflation. As Gov. in 2006 he vetoed a minimum wage hike. You’ll also be shocked to learn that Mitt’s flip-flop file is growing daily, probably almost as fast as Mitt’s personal fortune.
Mitt is also a serial privatizer – most notably he has pledged to zero out funding for Amtrak and privatize it entirely. Hard to believe that a former Gov. of Mass., one of the nation’s most transit- and rail-dependent states, could support destroying Amtrak. Next thing we’ll find is that Romney is secretly a Yankees fan.
Mitt called a bill to empower more workers to form and join unions an “attack … on the American worker.” Who knew? I guess saving social security from Mitt’s Wall Street raiders is actually an attack on retirement security.
This is just a sneak preview. Stay tuned – more to come.