Obama Attacks Romney on Corporation Comment

(DES MOINES, Iowa) -- On his first visit back to the Iowa state fairgrounds since the 2008 campaign, President Obama, on Thursday, used a grassroots rally to launch sharp new attacks against rival Mitt Romney over the debt and deficit, and vigorously defended his own handling of the same.

“The worldview that Gov. Romney gained from his experience as a financial CEO explains something. It explains why the last time he visited these same fairgrounds, he famously declared ‘corporations are people,’” Obama said, drawing loud boos from the crowd of 2,500.

“That’s what he said, that’s what he called them,” Obama added. “It also explains why, when a woman right here in Iowa shared a story of her financial struggles, he gave her an answer out of an economics textbook.  He said, ‘Our productivity equals our income.’  Let me tell you something: We believe in the profit motive. We believe that risk-takers and investors should be rewarded. That’s what makes our economy so dynamic. But we also believe that everybody should have opportunity.”

Romney, on his most recent visit to Des Moines earlier this month, argued that Obama has presided over a “prairie fire of debt,” and told voters, “Every day we fail to act we feed that fire with our own lack of resolve.”

His campaign and the Republican National Committee have also stressed that during Obama’s first term, $5 trillion was added to the debt, which now exceeds $15.6 trillion.

“A president who broke his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term has no standing when it comes to fiscal responsibility. By the end of this year, President Obama will have presided over a record-shattering four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits and added an historic amount to our national debt,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams.

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