Is Romney backtracking on his 100,000 jobs created claim?

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Is Mitt Romney walking back claims that he helped create 100,000 new jobs during his time at Bain Capital?

Back in December, Romney told Time magazine, “…so I’ll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs. We created over 100,000 jobs.”

A couple weeks later, he told Fox News, “And I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

Those claims, of course, came under fire, and it was interesting to note that during last night’s debate, Romney’s talking points changed slightly, when he said: “And four of the companies that we invested in, they weren’t businesses I ran, but we invested in, ended up today having some 120,000 jobs.”

It is, of course, possible that both things are true — that Bain had a “net-net” effect of creating over 100,000 jobs during his tenure — and that four of the companies they invested in “ended up” creating 120,000 jobs.

But if the former were true, why not just stick with that?

Matt K. Lewis