Romney adviser defends Bain sending jobs to China: Obama 'outsourcing' to Omaha
Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie on Sunday compared Bain Capital sending jobs overseas while Mitt Romney was the CEO to President Barack Obama's campaign "outsourcing" telemarketing to places like Omaha, Nebraska.
Appearing on CNN, Gillespie ripped The Washington Post for reporting that Bain had invested in companies that outsourced jobs to China and India, calling it "a breathless headline over a baseless story."
"The reporter confused the notion of outsourcing -- now a lot of American companies outsource," Gillespie explained. "They outsource domestically as well. For example, the Obama for America campaign outsources from its own campaign telemarketing services."
"To Omaha or wherever it is," CNN host Candy Crowley pointed out. "But we're talking about foreign jobs here."
"I think the reporter confused the notion of outsourcing -- which happens all the time when you don't do all of your services in house, you go outside -- to moving jobs offshore," Gillespie continued. "And yes, there were companies that Bain invested in that did engage in outsourcing. A lot of companies do, obviously. It's an economic model that makes sense."
The liberal blog Think Progress has noted that the Romney campaign is technically correct that there is a difference between "outsourcing" and "offshoring."
But the effect is similar: Jobs are provided to people in other countries instead of the U.S.
"This simply doesn’t change the fact that Bain, under Romney, invested in companies whose sole purpose was to move jobs to other countries, directly countering the narrative that Romney has been trying to set," Think Progress' Pat Garofalo and Igor Volsky wrote last week.
Watch this video from ABC's This Week, broadcast June 24, 2012.
(h/t: Think Progress)