23 Aug The President’s Message, July/August 2012: Uncovering the Truth

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” –Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, October 2010

It has been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Much the same can be said about political campaigns, especially a presidential race. Between now and Election Day, the American people will be inundated with hundreds of millions of dollars of political television and radio ads designed to convince middle-class and lower-income workers to vote for the agenda of the ultra rich.

Most of the money for these ads will come from a handful of the wealthiest, most conservative, anti-union individuals and corporations in this country. The primary focus of these ads will be to distort the facts and cover up the truth about the real reason the U.S. economic situation has not improved as much as we would have liked in the last several years.

The truth is that the leadership of the Republican Party and their allies in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street hated losing power after the 2008 elections. They determined that the only way to regain control of the White House was to do whatever they could to stop President Obama from succeeding in turning the economy around from the disastrous condition in which the Bush Administration left it.

From the day President Obama took office, these phony patriots have consistently opposed virtually every piece of legislation he has proposed to put people back to work and improve the lives of our citizens. To reinforce this “roadblock” game plan on Capitol Hill, the President’s opponents have spent the last four years filling the airwaves with distortions and outright lies about every element of his policy agenda.

Now, after four years of standing in the way of economic progress, the leaders of the Republican Party cynically claim that the economy has not grown fast enough and therefore the American people should replace President Obama with Mitt Romney, an individual who was born into wealth and privilege; an individual who has spent nearly his entire adult life accumulating even greater wealth in the most unpatriotic manner imaginable — championing a business model that destroys the livelihoods of working men and women by closing factories and shipping good American jobs overseas.

Ironically, Mitt Romney is telling the American people that he should be elected president because of his “extensive” business background. Yet, he refuses to discuss the details of that experience and becomes indignant whenever the truth is exposed about the lives and communities that were ruined by Bain Capital, the private equity financial firm he founded and ran for many years.

Like most Wall Street multimillionaires, Mitt Romney prefers to operate in secrecy, fiercely refusing to shed any light on his business practices or let the American people see for themselves whether or not he has been paying his fair share in taxes.

Despite campaigning for president almost non-stop for the past six years, Mitt Romney insists on keeping the American people in the dark about how he would lead our country to greater prosperity. He has yet to articulate a detailed plan that he would enact beyond general support for the very policies that brought our economy to the brink of another Great Depression. Evidently, he is concerned that being open and honest about his agenda would be devastating to his election chances.

It is telling that the only major policy issue Mitt Romney is willing to discuss is health care. Romney has declared that on his first day in office he would get rid of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s historic health care reform legislation that has already provided enormous benefits and savings to working families. But, to someone worth hundreds of millions of dollars whose spouse and children have never gone without adequate medical care because of a lack of money, repealing this legislation would be just another “business decision.”

I can think of no worse scenario for our members and the American people than having a President of the United States who is so far removed and unfamiliar with the realities and challenges facing working people every day; a president so unconcerned about the impact his decisions have on the lives of average working people; a president so conditioned to conducting business in secrecy; a president so uncomfortable with being up front and truthful with the American people.

To avoid the national calamity that would surely result from a Romney presidency, working people and those less fortunate in our society will have to disregard the lies and distortions in the Republican political ads and vote in their own interest and not the interests of their bosses and the ultra rich.

—Frank Hurt, BCTGM International President