Biden: Romney Jeep Ad "outrageous lie" that undermines trust
Vice President Joe Biden gestures while speaking at a campaign rally at the Municipal Auditorium in Sarasota, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012.
/ AP Photo/Matt RourkeUpdated: 6:02 p.m. ET
SARASOTA, Fla. -- Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday branded a much-criticized Ohio ad campaign by Republican nominee Mitt Romney "an outrageous lie" and cast it as a character issue that should matter to all voters, not just those in Ohio.
In TV and radio ads running in Ohio, Romney suggests that Chrysler and GM are shipping jobs to China and that Romney, who opposed the Obama administration bailout that revived U.S. automakers, is the true champion of the industry. Fact-checkers, both car companies, and the Obama campaign have accused Romney of flagrant distortions.
Biden: Romney Jeep ad an "outrageous lie"
Biden took the rhetoric to new heights on Wednesday. The Ohio ad, he told a rally here, says Obama forced Chrysler into bankruptcy so that "Italians could take over Chrysler and ship Jeep manufacturing to China. ... It's an outrageous lie. A lie, a lie that is so deceptive and so patently untrue" that Chrysler executives have felt compelled to point out repeatedly that not only are they not sending U.S. jobs anywhere, they are adding shifts and workers at U.S. plants.
Speaking on the issue in a hard-fought swing state that is far from Ohio and is not dependent on the auto industry, Biden said the election comes down to trust. Romney "is desperate to convince Ohio voters that he's ... committed to the U.S. auto industry, no matter how much confusion he must sow to do it," Biden said. "Folks, the president's job is not to sow confusion. It's to plant the seeds of confidence. Presidential elections are predominantly about character ... Character, character, character."
Obama "says what he means and he stands by what he says," Biden said. "And that's one thing his opponent has not done. He has not stood by anything he has said. So ask yourself in this election, who do you trust?"
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, responding to Biden at a campaign event in Racine, Wis., in his congressional district, said Democrats were trying to hide from "inconvenient" facts. "Today you might have heard that Joe Biden again was at it again. Today he was talking about the government bailout, which they keep touting as an unqualified success story," Ryan said.
Ryan: Auto industry bailout was no success story
"The facts, they speak for themselves. President Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, taxpayers still stand to lose $25 billion dollars in the president's politically managed bankruptcy. These companies, Chrysler in particular we know this story, are now choosing to expand manufacturing overseas. These are the facts. Those facts are inconvenient for the president but no one disputes them."
Chrysler has said it may produce some Jeeps in China to serve the Chinese market. The company says no U.S. jobs would be affected and in fact it is expanding at home. The consensus among analysts is that Obama's 2009 decision to provide government loans to GM and Chrysler while they went through bankruptcy likely saved the companies and more than 1 million jobs. Romney opposed the loans and said the companies should have relied on private capital. However, the episode unfolded during the depths of the recession and analysts note that such capital was not available.
Obama campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said Ryan was "forced to do Mitt Romney's dirty work in Wisconsin today - telling blatant falsehoods about the auto rescue in a desperate attempt to salvage their campaign. But the American people aren't going to buy it."
Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to Romney, was asked by reporters on the Romney plane from Tampa to Miami to comment on Biden's characterization of the Romney ad campaign as "an outrageous lie." Madden replied, "We've got an ad out that we believe makes the case for why Governor Romney would be stronger for the auto industry and why the auto industry's an important part of a strong economy. They've got an ad that they're using to make their case to the public, and we'll leave that with voters."
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All others will be in the back of the bus. His repeated lies about Jeep is proof he has no empathy for hard working, middle class people and their families. The tea party and the likes of Santorum and Ryan will work Romney like a puppet on strings.
Here is a man that is lying to America about everything. The latest is about Jeep, a division of Chrysler. He says in ads he airs in Ohio that Jeep is moving all of it's manufacturing to China to scare the people working here. The worst was how he made American people pay more for autos by buying in to Delphi manufacturing and then holding GM hostage by raising the prices of the parts to complete the cars after the auto loan to bring back the auto industry. UAW is filing a lawsuit about his unethical way to make the fifteen million from the auto rescue. He hides the fraud from America by not releasing 2009 income taxes. I hope that it is brought out in the litigation against him about conflict of interest. Chrysler and GM have sent letters to the employees that the political ads from Romney are lies to get you to vote against Obama.
He says these things as Bain Capital is sending another company in Freeport Illinois to China and closing the plant in Freeport.
Here is a guy that his son has bought in to a company that makes electronic voting machines that are distributed in most battleground states.
Then he talks about smaller government, but he wants the government in your bedroom. He wants to criminalize abortion. If he were to get in and you or your daughter got raped , turned up pregnant after he repealed Roe versus Wade, you would be forced to carry it to term or go to jail for murder.
I could go on and on about what is corrupt about Romney. A liar isn't presidential. You and most other people have means to find out all if these things. All you need to do is go to google, type in your search and there are articles that show archives and transcripts. Check them out before you vote for a greedy idiot!
John D. Taylor
It is very interesting how the Obama, Obama Campaign, et al transfer all of Obama's huge character flaws on opponents....I guess it works becuase they know them all too well
Seriously. What's with this guy?
"Chrysler has said it may produce some Jeeps in China"
Is that a good thing for the USA? How much money did Chrysler get of the tax payers money again?
Not only are you quoting out of context, you're not even quoting the entire sentence.
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News Flash...The Democrats, including Senator Obama, took over congress on Jan. 2007. There were in complete control of both the Senate and the House of Reps., they controlled the agenda, what was to come of for a vote and what did not. Congress controls the budgets and policies before the President has any say so and the President can also be made completely irrelivant with a 2/3 vote.
President Bush didn't trash anything, but President Obama's buddies sure did like Jon Corzine.
The previous Senator & Gov. of New Jersey and big time supporter and fundraiser for President Obama.
Jon Stevens Corzine is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and of MF Global, and a former American politician, who served as the 54th Governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010. A Democrat, Corzine served five years of a six-year U.S. Senate term representing New Jersey before being elected Governor in 2005. He was defeated for re-election in 2009 by Republican Chris Christie. In March 2010, Corzine was named chairman and CEO of MF Global Inc., a financial services firm specializing in futures brokerage. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2011, and Corzine resigned on November 4, 2011.
James A. Johnson political history within the Democrat Party and his ties to the Clinton Administration, former campaign manager for Walter Mondale and chaired the vice presidential selection committee for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. He briefly led the vice-presidential selection process for the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama. Also worked for Presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. From 1977 to 1981 he was executive assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale during the entire Carter Administration. From 1985 to 1990, he was amanaging director with Lehman Brothers.
In 1990, Johnson became vice chairman of Fannie Mae, or the Federal National Mortgage Association, a quasi-public organization that guarantees mortgages for millions of American homeowners. In 1991, he was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, a position he held until 1998.
An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998. A 2006 OFHEO report found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.
Franklin Raines served in the Carter Administration as associate director for economics and government in the Office of Management and Budget and assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977 to 1979. In 1991 he became Fannie's Mae's Vice Chairman, a post he left in 1996 in order to join the Clinton Administration as the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, where he served until 1998. In 1999, he returned to Fannie Mae as CEO.
On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called "early retirement" from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses.
In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $90 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings, initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as $6.3 billion.
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My beef is American taxpayers bailed out Chrysler, why should they build a single Jeep anywhere else besides the USA?
If a single Jeep is built in China, YES, U.S. workers are being displaced.
From the article:
"Chrysler has said it may produce some Jeeps in China"
If you build Jeeps in America that you intend to sell in China, you make it incredibly hard to make a profit on the enterprise because of the higher labor rates here. And the additional shipping costs. Only a fool would attempt this. What you propose only works on high-end vehicles, for which there is only a small market. Big profits only come in big numbers.
Why do you think Japanese automakers build American-market cars in America? Because American labor is cheaper (yes, cheaper) and they save overseas shipping. This is proven business methodology. Chrysler and GM are simply doing what has been proven to work, WITH NO LOSS OF AMERICAN JOBS.
Building Jeeps in China DOES NOT displace American workers. It increases revenues for US automakers, allowing them to capitalize expansion here. Get a clue.
"The facts, they speak for themselves. President Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, taxpayers still stand to lose $25 billion dollars in the president's politically managed bankruptcy." Paul Ryan
Chrysler has said it may produce some Jeeps in China to serve the Chinese market. The company says no U.S. jobs would be affected and in fact it is expanding at home.
Why not build ALL the Jeeps in the USA Chrysler? When you find out you can build Jeeps much cheaper in China, how long to you think if will be until they start shipping Jeeps to the USA, Made in China? Do you want to believe an auto executive? Or the do you believe Chrysler is willing to spend more for Jeeps built in the USA?
In the finale debate between Obama and Romney, Pres. Obama said that Gov. Romney was not for federal government helping the auto industry and continues these lies on TV in Ohio.
This was a complete lie:
Romney is right on one front. In his infamous New York Times op-ed, titled by the paper "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," he did say that government money should be made available for automakers if they needed help emerging from bankruptcy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/romney-auto-bailout_n_2006706.html
For the record, this is what Gov. Romney said in his op-ed in the NYT.
The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.
In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.
Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year's Republican presidential nomination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1351778412-VXGDLTSdm4NmEexeoDquyA
A government bailout was the only solution. Romney supported guarantees of loans that others would provide, but the recession sucked all the capital out of the capital markets. Result? The automakers wouldn't wouldn't have gone through bankruptcy and managed recovery. They would go bankrupt and die.
Keep in mind this story isn't finished. GM is getting stronger, and there is no indication the government will lose anything on its investment. Was it a huge, bold move? Yes. But given the possible consequences it was the right thing to do.
You can't build Jeeps in America that you want to sell in China and make a decent profit. See my response to your previous comment.
As for building Jeeps in China for American consumption, think about that for half a second. How many American Jeep buyers do you think would be willing to buy a Chinese Jeep? You might as well try to sell Communist armbands in Texas. Did you know that if you try to sell a Mexican-made VW in Germany you're better off just sending it to the crusher? Do you think Americans have any less pride in their Jeeps? Seriously?
Again - Get a clue.
When Fiat realizes it can produces Jeeps in China much cheaper than the USA, where do you think they will build more Jeeps?
Use your brain people, this is not hard questions.
Chrysler is just covering their butts to protect their USA market share for now, but in the end the bottom line will always win out.