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Candidate Attacks About Job Outsourcing A Hot Topic

DENVER (CBS4) - It's nearly impossible to get away from those TV commercials claiming each candidate for president has outsourced jobs, and on Wednesday Colorado Republicans fired their own accusations at the Obama administration.

In an election that's all about jobs, accusing the opponent of shipping American jobs overseas is a potentially damaging claim. It's especially damaging if it's said a lot and people start to believe it. That's exactly what both campaigns are attempting.

Standing before the Denver Museum of Nature & Science where the president signed the stimulus into law, Republicans seized the subject.

"Those tax dollars were used to fund jobs overseas," Colorado GOP Chair Ryan Call said.

Republicans claim under President Obama the stimulus gave billions of dollars to overseas companies. Democrats claim Mitt Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, invested in companies that sent jobs overseas.

"It raises some very serious questions about where people's priorities lie," Colorado Democratic Party Chair Rick Palacio said. "In this case, you have Mitt Romney who has a history of outsourcing."

It's a claim the Obama campaign made in an ad that CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd debunked in a Reality Check report. (Reality Check section)

Based on what Boyd has seen Romney was not involved in the day-to-day management of Bain Capital when the off-shoring of jobs took place. He had left Bain abruptly to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Romney was still listed as Bain's CEO and sole stockholder in securities and exchange documents. While it could be argued he was responsible for decisions made, even in his absence, there is no evidence he was actively running the company in Massachusetts at the time he was running the Olympics in Utah.

As for the outsourcing charges against Obama, Boyd will break those down in a Reality Check yet to come. But the Romney campaign is on weak footing too -- at least one of the companies it refers to in its new ad received its government loan under a program initiated by President Bush, not the stimulus.

The fact is the financial deals and the question of off-shoring in a global economy are complicated matters and the campaigns know it. That is why they're counting on a barrage of ads to convince voters their claims are true. But as is often the case, both sides are twisting the truth.

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