Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
CHARLOTTE -- The Democrats sought to make their case against Mitt Romney and Bain Capital tonight with a string of witnesses: workers laid off after Bain bought their companies.
"When Mitt Romney talks about his business experience, remember it is not experience creating good-paying jobs," said Cindy Hewitt, a former worker from Miami. "It is experience cutting jobs. It is experience shutting plants."
David Foster said that Romney and the private-equity firm Bain loaded up his old Kansas City steel mill "with millions in debt -- and within months, they used some of that borrowed money to pay themselves millions. Within a decade, the debt kept growing and was so large the company was forced into bankruptcy."
A laid-off worker named Randy Johnson said he doesn't think Romney is "a bad man," or fault him because some companies fail.
"What I fault him for is making money without a moral compass," Johnson said. "I fault him for putting profits before people like me. But that's just Romney economics ... Mitt Romney will stick it to working people."
Romney aides said Bain saved many more companies than it lost, and created more jobs in the bargain.
Meanwhile, Romney spokeswoman Michele Davis said, Obama "doesn't want to talk about his record -- unemployment over 8% and 23 million Americans looking for work."
"Mitt Romney helped build new companies and fix struggling ones," Davis said. "He knows how to get America back to work."