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Aug 31 2016

GA Dems hit Mike Pence on outsourcing as he speaks in Dalton

Democrats hit Mike Pence on outsourcing as he speaks in Dalton

Atlanta Journal Constitution / August 30, 2016

 

As Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence prepares to speak this afternoon in Dalton, Georgia Democrats are letting voters know that the Indiana governor’s choice of venue is ironic at best.

The party points us to a recent article in the Indianapolis Star questioning Pence’s bona fides on Trump’s plans to bring U.S. jobs back to the U.S. The paper said in a story this past Sunday:

As Donald Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence is campaigning for a man who has promised to penalize companies that ship jobs overseas.

But since Pence became governor in 2013, the state has awarded millions of dollars in economic development incentives to companies that have moved production to foreign countries such as Mexico and China. Those production shifts have cost thousands of Hoosiers their jobs during Pence’s time in office.

What makes it a local issue is that Dalton, still famous for its carpet industry, in 2012 became known as the “town with the past year’s worst job loss,” according to an NPR piece at the time. The title came after years of downsizing, consolidation and outsourcing in the flooring industry.

A story this past January by The Times Free Press found that the city still hasn’t recovered and won’t for some time.

“Mike Pence sure does have a lot of gall coming to Georgia and telling us how the Trump/Pence agenda will benefit our workers,” Democratic Party of Georgia spokesman Michael Smith said. “In Indiana, he’s throwing millions of dollars in incentives to companies that ship American jobs overseas. And the man he wants to be president would rather create jobs in China and Mexico than invest in the American people. They’ve destroyed too many families’ livelihoods already—we don’t need Trump or Pence putting the entire country at risk.”

 

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: DPG in the News, Georgia Democrats · Tagged: Dalton, Mike Pence, outsourcing

Oct 16 2014

David Perdue is blaming everyone but himself…

In an interview Wednesday, David Perdue again refused to answer for his career spent outsourcing American jobs—a career that he is “proud” of. Earlier this week, The Hill reported that Perdue had hidden from voters a key part of his resume—a senior consulting stint at a now-bankrupt textile company in India.

Short on answers, Perdue is now deflecting focus on his questionable business record by criticizing people who “who really have no business background, and don’t really understand what it takes to create jobs”…and the media.

From the Washington Post:

After attacking President Obama over his handling of the Ebola crisis and the Islamic State terrorist group, businessman and GOP Senate candidate David Perdue turned defensive this week when asked about his record on outsourcing jobs.

 

“The criticism I’ve gotten over the last few weeks is coming from people who really have no business background and really don’t understand, you know, what it takes to create jobs and create economic value — which is really what this free enterprise system is based on,” Perdue told reporters at a Veterans of Foreign Wars social hall event.

 

A local television reporter tried again off camera, prompting Perdue to complain that the news media isn’t giving him a fair shake with its “30-second sound-bite business.”

Read the entire story here, and watch the exchange at the video below.

 

 

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Republicans · Tagged: David Perdue, Ga GOP, outsourcing

Oct 06 2014

WATCH: David Perdue doesn’t get it…

The AJC reported earlier today that David Perdue responded to a Politico story in which the Georgia GOP candidate for U.S. Senate—when asked specifically about his experience in outsourcing—said “Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that.”

 

Today, when asked to defend those comments, Perdue told reporters “Defend it? I’m proud of it.”

 

Check out the WSBTV clip here.

 

Perdue Defend Watch 

 

Find the AJC piece below…

 

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Perdue ‘proud’ of outsourcing past, blames Washington for jobs lost

 

By Chris Joyner

 

U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue said Monday he is proud of outsourcing he has done in his career as a corporate executive, pushing blame for lost jobs back on Washington.

 

Perdue, a former CEO for Dollar General and Republican nominee to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, was stung by his own words last week in an article on Politico.com. The Washington political news website quoted Perdue from a 2005 deposition where he said he “spent most of my career” outsourcing.

 

“Defend it? I’m proud of it,” he said in a press stop at The White House restaurant in Buckhead. “This is a part of American business, part of any business. Outsourcing is the procurement of products and services to help your business run. People do that all day.”

 

The deposition was taken as part of a lawsuit in the bankruptcy of Pillowtex, a failed textile company where Perdue was CEO in 2002 and 2003. In remarks Monday, he attempted to draw a line between his business decisions and Washington policies.

 

“I think the issue that people get confused about is the loss of jobs,” he said. “This is because of bad government policies: tax policy, regulation, even compliance requirements. It puts us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. Even today, right now this administration has policies going on that are decimating industries today.”

 

Perdue has run on his resume as a successful businessman, so the deposition is a windfall for Michelle Nunn, Perdue’s Democratic opponent, who has tried to paint him as a job killer.

 

“In the deposition, David Perdue explains, in his own words, that he would summarize his business experience as mostly spent outsourcing jobs overseas to places like China and Mexico,” said Nunn spokesman Nathan Click. “That’s a far different explanation than what he’s been trying to convince Georgia of during this election and it’s not the kind of experience we need in Washington.”

 

This month Perdue received the endorsement of a key business group, the National Federation of Independent Business. In remarks made at the endorsement, Perdue put his record at Dollar General squarely up against his opponent’s, who he said had offered no “ideas on how to get people working again in America.”

 

“We added about 2,200 stores, created almost 20,000 jobs and doubled the value of that company in a very short period of time. Not because of me, but because we listened to our customers and employees,” he said. “We helped families get from pay day to pay day and that was our mission. We got back to that mission and it worked, pure and simple.”

 

It’s at Dollar General where Perdue typically hangs his CEO hat, not Pillowtex. His 9-month stint at the helm of the North Carolina textile firm is the only significant business credit not mentioned in his campaign biography.

 

In in interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year, Perdue referred to his time as head of Pillowtex as “a trying experience.”

 

The Pillowtex collapse laid off 7,650 workers in the United States and Canada, about 4,800 in North Carolina alone. At the time, it was the largest single layoff in state history.

 

“I thought I could help,” he said. “They were some of the best workers I’ve ever worked with. I would have done anything to salvage the situation.”

But in the 2005 deposition, Perdue was blunt about the company’s need for more outsourcing.

 

“One of the problems this company had was (it was) overburdened with domestic manufacturing capacity,” he said. “And those cost of goods out of those factories were significantly higher than the costs or prices coming in from importers at that time,” he said.

 

In determining whether he wanted to accept the Pillowtex job, Perdue said he first had to find out if company officials “had the stomach for a turnaround.” Perdue said the company had to be “committed to the implementation of the strategies that were being laid out” to “market the brands, and second, improve cost of goods sold.”

 

Did that mean moving all manufacturing jobs out of the U.S., the lawyers asked.

 

“Not all,” Perdue said. “They (Pillowtex) felt like certainly a majority would have to be sourced out. They did not know how much. But the sourcing and marketing strategies were cornerstones of their plan of reorganization.”

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Republicans · Tagged: David Perdue, Ga GOP, Georgia Republicans, Georgia Senate race, outsourcing

Jul 31 2014

QUESTION FOR DAVID PERDUE: When You Outsourced Hundreds Of American Jobs, Did Your Company Get A Tax Break?

QUESTION FOR DAVID PERDUE: When You Outsourced Hundreds Of American Jobs, Did Your Company Get A Tax Break?

In Today’s AJC, Perdue Unveils Support For Tax Breaks For Companies That Ship Jobs Overseas While Raising Cash From Party Leaders In DC

As A Corporate Executive, Perdue Led Efforts To Outsource 1,700 Jobs & Hand American Workers Pink Slips

DPG: “Georgians deserve to know if Perdue and the firm he worked for got a tax break for laying off American workers.”

 

ATLANTA, GA — Georgians are reading in this morning’s Atlanta Journal Constitution how David Perdue announced his opposition to eliminating tax breaks for firms that ship jobs overseas while raising money with national party leaders in Washington, D.C. His announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise to Georgians — as a corporate executive, David Perdue led efforts to fire hundreds of workers and ship their jobs overseas.

 

Perdue’s announcement begs the question, posed by Michael Smith of the Democratic Party of Georgia:

 

“While orchestrating the layoffs of hundreds of American workers and shipping their jobs overseas, did David Perdue and his firm get a tax break — the same tax breaks he endorsed yesterday?  Georgians deserve to know whether Perdue and his firm prospered from the tax break he now supports.”

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Perdue’s announcement this morning:

Perdue’s visit to Washington came amid a flurry of activity as Congress prepares to leave town for August, including a failed vote in the Senate on a bill that would have prevented companies from deducting from their taxes expenses related to moving operations overseas. Republicans blocked the bill, calling it an election-year gimmick.

…

Perdue said he was not familiar with the Senate bill, but he would tackle the issue by overhauling the tax code and reducing federal regulations.

“Rather than penalizing people for going offshore, we’ve got to make ourselves more competitive,” Perdue said. 

 

It’s been widely reported how David Perdue was literally THE executive in charge of moving 1,700 jobs overseas at a Texas manufacturing firm. MSNBC wrote earlier this year:

As senior vice president, Perdue was in charge of international operations at Haggar and later domestic operations as well. Under [Perdue’s] watch, the company did what so many clothing manufacturers did at the time: closed down factory lines in America and outsourced production overseas where labor was cheap and regulations were less restrictive.

That meant cutting hundreds of jobs at South Texas facilities in Weslaco, Edinburg, and Brownsville and producing clothes in countries like Mexico, where the average manufacturing employee earned about $1.50 an hour in wages and benefits.

 

For his part, Perdue even boasted in that report how skilled he was at outsourcing, saying:

“To politicians who have never been in a free enterprise system this sounds really easy,” Perdue said. “It is anything but easy. It’s very messy.”

 

###

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Press Releases · Tagged: David Perdue, Georgia GOP, Georgia Senate race, outsourcing

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