New Mexico Gets Bain’d: Romney Took $2.5M in Tax Dollars and 1,000 Jobs From New Mexicans in 2000s
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Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital duped New Mexico more than a decade ago when it set up a Silver City call center, promising more than 1,000 local jobs, only to have it close just two and half years later in a wave of outsourcing, laying off almost 800 middle-class workers and taking New Mexico taxpayers for more than $2.5 million in the process.
Before Bain Capital purchased a majority stake in the company in 1999, Stream International employed seven times more American workers, just over 3,000, than foreign. By the time Romney’s Bain sold its interest in the company in 2001, they had constricted Stream’s domestic investment while expanding operations in at least nine foreign countries.
Under Romney, Bain Capital took “free stuff” from our governments including free rent and free job training, all funded by New Mexico taxpayers. When the free training dried up, Bain packed up and left town taking at least $1.4 million in New Mexico taxpayer dollars and leaving behind a company and a community ideally set to be outsourced to no less than four foreign companies.
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In Silver City, Bain had created almost a thousand American jobs just to siphon the profits from that work to build oversees facilities where their jobs would go to die.
Even before the company had hired its full contingent of new jobs, the company had positioned the Silver City facility to be outsourced to one of the many new foreign call centers Bain and Stream had built.
In October 2001, with oversees call centers profitable, Bain promptly took its money, including the millions provided by New Mexico taxpayers, and ran.
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In New Mexico, $2.5 million is a lot of money, and 1,000 is a lot of jobs.