Biden attacks Romney tenure as venture capitalist

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden, campaigning in Democratic territory with high unemployment, went after Republican Mitt Romney's business background Wednesday and cast him as a corporate raider more interested in profits than people.

Biden said the former businessman favors policies that benefit the well-to-do over average people. He said Obama wants to give everyone a fair shake and make sure everyone plays by the same rules.

"These guys don't get it," Biden said, his voice rising as he addressed supporters on a factory floor in Youngstown, where the unemployment rate is 10.4 percent, more than 2 points above the national average.

"As long as the government helps the guys at the top, workers and small businesses and communities, they can fend for themselves," Biden said. At the same time, "The big guy is doing well," he said.

The speech in Ohio, an economically battered state that will help decide the November presidential election, continued the effort by President Barack Obama's campaign to portray Romney as more in tune with rich people like himself.

Obama's campaign and an independent group that supports the president have begun airing ads in several states, including Ohio, that highlight the failure of a Missouri-based steel company that was bought by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney helped get off the ground. GST Steel later went bankrupt in 2001, costing 750 people their jobs. Romney was no longer with Bain at the time of GST's collapse.

"Nobody knows better than the people in the (Mahoning River) valley the consequences of that kind of philosophy. You have been through hell and back," the vice president said.

Romney's campaign said he has a net job creation record both as a businessman and from his term as Massachusetts governor. It countered the attack on Bain Capital by citing Solyndra, a California-based solar energy company that collapsed despite receiving more than $500 million in Obama administration loans.

"President Obama has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on unsuccessful policies that have not created jobs, burdened future generations with massive debt and resulted in failed investments like Solyndra," said Romney spokeswoman Sarah Pompei.

Biden's speech came a day after Romney portrayed Obama as an agent of reckless spending who is leading the country toward a threatening debt crisis. And it comes two days after the Obama campaign signaled it would make Romney's tenure at Bain Capital an issue in a campaign that both sides are trying to keep focused on the economy and jobs.

The back and forth illustrates the power of the economy as the dominant campaign issue this year, leaving voters to decide whether the slow recovery represents a success or a failure.

In choosing Youngstown for Biden's speech, the Obama campaign picked a symbol of Rust Belt economic struggles. But as Ohio's unemployment rate has dropped by 3 percentage points in two years, Biden is casting Obama economic policies as a success.

eastman kodak richard cordray shannon de lima joe torre west virginia university michele bachmann jessica biel