http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z2
Romney’s Bain figures don’t add up
Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:35 AM ET, 01/09/2012
During Saturday night’s debate, Mitt Romney repeated his oft-made claim that his time at Bain Capital led to the creation of more than 100,000 jobs. George Stephanopoulos, one of the debate’s moderators, asked whether that number counted both jobs that were created and jobs that were lost. Romney’s answer was dismissive — and untrue. “It includes the net of both. I’m a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that.”
The Romney campaign has repeatedly explained how they arrived at the 100,000 jobs figure. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, for instance, got Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom on the record. “Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs). This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain.”
The American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis also asked the Romney campaign for details on their jobs number. “Here’s what the Romney campaign e-mailed me when I asked for some substantiation of the claim,” wrote Pethokoukis:
(Romney campaign/James Pethokoukis) Whatever you want to say about Romney’s time at Bain, the number he is providing to reporters, the number Stephanopoulos was asking about, the number Romney is using publicly, is not net-net. It takes three successful companies of the hundreds Romney was involved with and uses their employment totals now — long after Romney finished working with them. Even Pethokoukis, a Romney-friendly conservative, concludes, “That’s not going to cut it.”
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