Why Mitt Romney Had Such A Bad Record On Jobs In Mass. -- Lost over 48,000 manufacturing jobs

[bigtree]

November 14, 2011

Rick Perry’s and Jon Huntsman’s favorite: during Mitt Romney’s term as Governor of Massachusetts the state had the 47th best rate of job growth . . .

. . . Massachusetts’ unemployment generally follows that of the nation as a whole, but it went from slightly better than the national unemployment rate (5.6 percent versus 5.8 percent) when he took office than when he left (4.7 percent in Massachusetts versus 4.4 percent nationally). And his record is even arguably worse than that: Massachusetts lost population for two years in a row during Romney’s term. That means the unemployment number went down because the denominator shrank, but that’s hardly a sign of a growing economy. Total jobs in Massachusetts were the same when he left office than when he started and many key industries actually lost jobs.

. . . a number of Romney’s actions did not help. Romney is accused of four main failures on the job front: absenteeism and trashing his state while running for president, blocking stem cell research that could benefit the state’s strong biotechnology sector, refusing to invest in renewable energy, and neglecting the state’s infrastructure.

. . . Massachusetts’ infrastructure accrued a $20 billion deficit of overdue maintenance by the end of Romney’s term, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayer’s Foundation. “When you’re not fixing bridges, that’s a sector not creating jobs,” says Massachusetts Democratic Party chair John Walsh. “It’s foolish because you’re not creating savings, you’re just deferring the spending until problems get worse and the cost gets higher.”

So did Romney, who ran on a promise to improve job growth in Massachusetts, do anything good on that front? No, and he barely even tried. “During his time as governor he attempted only one statewide econ development initiative: to incentivize manufacturing companies with a rebate on state income tax,” says Barrow. “It didn’t work. I think he really just wasn’t doing a lot.”




read more: www.thenation.com/blog/164599/why-mitt-romney-had-such-bad-record-jobs-massachusetts

[Kolesar]

1. good work, Ben Adler

mouth smash
What we love about The Nation

[Viva_Daddy]

2. And what he did for MA he now wants to do to US.