Romney's campaign seized on Obama's comment that "if you own a
business, you didn't build that," to portray the president as
unsympathetic to small businesses that help boost the U.S. economy.
Obama's point was that successful business owners
have had the public's help at some point in their lives through public
education, roads or other government-funded projects that created an
environment for businesses to bloom.
"It wasn't a gaffe," Romney said at a
trucking company just outside of Boston last week. "It was instead his
ideology."
On Tuesday Obama's campaign released an ad
rejecting Romney's interpretation of the remarks, and at a campaign event in
Oregon, the president addressed the issue directly.
"He's been twisting my words around to
suggest that I don't value small business," Obama said of his Republican
opponent.
"Now, keep in mind, in politics you have to
endure a certain amount of spin. That's - everybody does it; I understand that
... Although I have to say when people omit entire sentences from a speech and
they start splicing and dicing, they may have tipped a little bit over their skis.
They may have gone over the edge," he said.
Obama said he had cut taxes on small businesses 18
times as president, and he defended his original comments with a list of ways
that public investment had helped companies prosper.
"If you talk to any business owner, small or
large, they'll tell you what also helps them succeed alongside their hard work,
their initiative, their great ideas is the ability to hire workers with the
right skills and the right education," he said.
"What helps them succeed is the ability to
ship and sell their products on new roads and bridges and ports and wireless
networks. What helps them succeed is having access to cutting- edge technology
which, like the Internet, often starts with publicly funded research and
development."
In a rebuttal to the Obama campaign's ad about the
subject, a Romney spokesman said the president's original comment spoke for
itself.
"It's clear what President Obama believes
because he told us: 'if you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody
else made that happen,'" Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said.
"He said it, and he meant it."
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