Romney hits Obama on job creation record

By Shira Schoenberg, Globe Correspondent

UPDATED

CONCORD, N.H. - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney this morning trained his fire on the man he hopes to replace, citing his own business background as he criticized President Obama for the pace of job creation in the United States.

Speaking to business leaders and financial services employees, Romney touted the lessons he learned as founder of Bain Capital and CEO of Bain & Company.

Obama, he said, has no similar experience, and the results to show it.

“He did not cause this recession, but he made it worse,” Romney said during a visit to the lead presidential primary state, here he has staked much of his campaign. “It will be essential to have a person who understands how the economy works, understands what it takes to create and grow jobs, in the White House.”

Romney avoided taking swipes at his Republican primary opponents. Asked about Michele Bachmann’s entrance into the race, he called the Minnesota House member a “very strong contender” and an “excellent candidate.”

Yet he took every opportunity to mention the man he hopes to face in November 2012.

“In February 2009, President Obama said if he hadn’t turned the economy around in three years, it was a one-term proposition,” Romney said. “He’s absolutely right.”

While Romney has at times appeared awkward on the campaign trail, today’s events put in him a setting where the businessman appears most comfortable - a roundtable with 20 business leaders at Mosaic Technology in Salem, and a speech before 200 employees of Lincoln Financial Group in Concord.

“He clearly knows the business community inside and out,” said Brian Hannon, director of information technology for Salem Radiology and a roundtable participant. “He touched on all the things we needed to hear.”

The visit to Lincoln Financial, though, threw a spotlight on Romney’s past criticism of the bank bailout bill initiated by President Bush and implemented by Obama.

Lincoln Financial Group is a subsidiary of Lincoln National Corp. In July 2009, Lincoln National Corp., based in Radnor, Penn. received $950 million from the government’s Capital Purchase Program, part of TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Romney did not mention TARP during his campaign stops yesterday. He has said in the past that he supported TARP and believed it was necessary to prevent a collapse of the financial system. But he has also criticized government for bailing out banks and said the program was badly implemented.

He wrote in his 2010 book “No Apology” that TARP “was intended to prevent a run on virtually every bank and financial institution in the country.” But he added, “TARP as administered by (Treasury) Secretary Timothy Geithner was as poorly explained, poorly understood, poorly structured, and poorly implemented as any legislation in recent memory.”

businessmen told Romney today they were concerned about the rising costs of health care and asked about the plan Romney signed into law in 2006 while governor of Massachusetts, which is similar to President Obama’s national health care overhaul.

Romney said it was unacceptable for Obama to impose a “one-size-fits-all plan” on the entire country, rather than leaving the decision up to each state.

“The president put in place a bill that’s 2,700 pages; our bill is 70 pages,” Romney said. “We dealt with people who didn’t have insurance; his plan deals with everyone.”

Romney said the Massachusetts plan dealt with the problem of uninsured people receiving care at taxpayer expense, but he acknowledged that it did not lower health care costs.

“We hoped to start bending the cost curve but we didn’t get there,” Romney said.

Romney said he would help small businesses by lowering the corporate tax rate from a high of 35 percent to 25 percent, and by eliminating loopholes for large corporations. He accused Obama of having “layered on massive doses of uncertainty” for businesses by trying to end President Bush’s tax cuts, pushing a cap-and-trade energy policy, and passing health care reform.

The events put a spotlight on Romney’s record in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh told reporters that US Labor Department statistics ranked Massachusetts 47th among the states in job growth during Romney’s tenure.“It’s clear his record in Massachusetts does not match what he’s suggesting he’d do to the country,” Walsh said.

Romney, asked about his Massachusetts record, responded, “The governor before me lost jobs, the governor after me lost jobs. I actually created jobs.”

After facing criticism for recently asking voters to vote for him in November 2012, rather than in the primaries and caucuses that begin in January or February, Romney made clear today that he wasn’t getting ahead of himself.

Asked by a voter who he might pick as vice presidential running mate, Romney responded, “It might be slightly presumptuous of me to start making plans of that nature.”