The danger of this ridiculous Fox News-inspired meme at the Republican convention is clear in this clip. You can stand there all day long and say you built stuff, but who cares if you built it without someone actually paying for it? In small business owner Steve Cohen's case, the stimulus bill brought him $2 million in government contracts and $220,000 in direct stimulus funds. That's right, Steve Cohen. President Obama helped keep your business afloat. Forget Congress, because if you're going to assign all the blame to Obama, he should get all the credit, too.
Screen Machine has received more than $2 million in government contracts, including nearly $220,000 in stimulus funds, and claims a "long and proud history of supplying heavy-duty American Made equipment to government agencies and the US Military."
Mr. Cohen is in the heavy equipment business. With so much stimulus money going toward road and highway repairs, retrofitting bridges and the like, Mr. Cohen's business stayed afloat during the Great Recession because the stimulus and the government helped him stay afloat. When confronted about that reality, he had this to say:
"There was a tremendous amount of money that went to all sectors. It would be very hard for a Mitt Romney, or a presidential candidate from any party, to go to any manufacturer and find someone who was not directly, or indirectly, affected somehow," said Steven Cohen, president of Ohio-based Screen Machine Industries, which hosted a Romney event in July and received stimulus contracts worth nearly $220,000.
"I think it would be irresponsible for an American manufacturer not to go after their fair share," Cohen told The Associated Press this week. "The question is whether it was a wise investment. That's for someone else to answer."
Well of course it was a wise investment. It kept Mr. Cohen in business, saved jobs, and helped rebuild infrastructure desperately in need of rebuilding.
President Obama may not have built that, but he and the American taxpayers paid for it. How utterly dishonest to stand up at the Republican convention and forget that fact.
