On Friday, Mitt Romney will make his closing argument on the economy in what his campaign is touting as a major address. The site Romney has chosen, however, exposes the hypocrisy and fallaciousness of one of Romney’s central economic arguments: the notion that government has no role in growing the private economy and helping businesses expand. Romney frequently mocks Obama’s “didn’t build it” remarks and routinely derides the 2009 Recovery Act as a failure that did nothing to create jobs.
But now, the GOP presidential candidate is delivering one of the last speeches of the campaign at Kinzler Construction Services in Ames, Iowa. A search of Recovery.gov shows that the firm benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts funded by the Recovery Act. Kinzler received $649,944 in contracts under stimulus-funded Department of Energy weatherization programs. The company also received $39,370 as a sub-contractor on a federal government contract to renovate a building owned by the federal government, making for a total of $689,314 in stimulus funds.
The firm’s website even includes a section touting its “featured projects.” Several of the projects appear to be publicly-funded renovation or construction projects, including public schools in Nebraska and Iowa, a community center in Iowa, and the new central station for Des Moines’ public transportation system:
This is not the first time that Romney has spoken at venues that undermine his economic claims. Earlier this week, Romney and his running mate campaigned at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, a national landmark built as a public works project during the New Deal. Ann Romney recently visited a Florida cancer center that received nearly $24 million in stimulus funds. And, among many other examples, Romney bashed the stimulus at a college that received stimulus funds for federal work-study programs that help make college more affordable.
Update:
Romney bashes the stimulus Kinzler benefited from in his speech:
A new stimulus, three years after the recession officially ended, may spare government, but it will not stimulate the private sector any better than did the stimulus of four years ago. And cutting one trillion dollars from the military will kill jobs and devastate our national defense.