Mitt Romney said he would have been unable to host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, had it not been for the “enormous spending and services of the federal government.”
The words, uttered by Romney in 2002, are in direct contrast to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s relentless attacks on President Barack Obama over his “you didn’t build that” comments.
Romney and Republicans have spent the last month knocking Obama as government-obsessed and for crediting Washington with the success of small businesses. But by the former Massachusetts governor’s own admission, it was only with the government’s support that he was able to pull off the Olympics he so often heralds as one of his career’s greatest accomplishments.
“Without question, we simply could not host Games in Salt Lake if it were not for the enormous spending and services of the federal government,” Romney had said in a 2001 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing around cooperation between federal, state, local and private agencies for the Salt Lake City Olympics.
“When I came to the Games two years ago, following the revelations of bid impropriety, there was nothing which caused greater anxiety than whether or not we could count on this critical federal support,” he said, before thanking both the Clinton and Bush administrations for being involved with his committee’s planning efforts “every step of the way.”
According to Romney at the time, former President George W. Bush specifically included Olympic items in the budget he submitted to Congress.
The testimony doesn’t just contradict Romney’s current position on the role of federal spending — it also underscores the outside help he received in orchestrating the 2002 Olympics. Throughout Romney’s candidacy, his campaign and affiliates have used the event to tout Romney as an “Olympics Savior.” Pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future placed a $7.2 million ad buy centered on his Olympics success, featuring Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi in one of its ads reflecting on how Romney brought her “a sense of hope.”
Missing from the ad, and Romney’s own telling of the story, is how that hope for the 2002 Olympics was also restored through $342 million in direct federal funding and an additional $1.1 billion in indirect financing from Washington.
Source: Siddiqui, Sabrina (Aug. 6, 2012). Mitt Romney: 2002 Winter Olympic Games Were Made Possible By ‘Enormous’ Federal Spending. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/mitt-romney-olympics_n_1748235.html?icid=hp_politics_art_more
About Lil Hill
Sorry, but your post is a giant non sequitur
Yes without federal money the games could not have succeeded. Yes Romney alone could not have done it. But without Mitt Romney’s leadership the money alone would not have worked. In other words, the same money under different management would not have been enough to make the games a success. Money without proper management simply results in a huge waste, Obama’s “stimulus” being the perfect example.
So that if Obama had been in charge, the Salt Lake City Olympics would have been a miserable failure, even with twice as much government money. We know this because before becoming president Obama had not a bit of experience in managing anything of substance. Before getting into politics he had done nothing productive with his life and had achieved nothing of significance. As a “community activist” he helped almost no one (see here). For that matter, he achieved little or nothing as a state or U.S. Senator.
Obama’s management of the U.S. economy has been a disaster. All he knows how to do is throw money at problems and rack up debt.
Mitt Romney takes government money and achieves good things with it. Obama takes government money and wastes it.
This is a rather simple concept.