Romney wasn't just the head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Romney was also a registered lobbyist for the organization, Utah state records show.And it turns out he was a pretty good lobbyist ... at least as far as getting taxpayer funding is concerned. Romney secured nearly $400 million from state and local government in Utah, plus an additional $1.3 billion dollars from the federal government. That was more than twice the federal funding the Atlanta Olympics had gotten just six years earlier.Romney last worked as a lobbyist on Dec. 31, 2000, according to a spokesman for the state lieutenant governor, who oversees the registry.
As you may recall, Romney bragged about his skill at lobbying the government for money during his gubernatorial campaign. You can watch him do it in the video at the top of this post. So the next time Mitt Romney falsely accuses President Obama of being a "crony capitalist" or of being an ideologue who wants to put government in charge of everything, remember that Romney himself was a lobbyist who not only squeezed record breaking sums from local, state, and federal governments, but he bragged about it.
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