Last week aides to Mitt Romney said the Republican candidate for president will let the tax credit expire if he's elected president in November.
On his own campaign swing, Obama said that position is simply wrong-headed.
"At a moment when homegrown energy is creating new jobs in states like Colorado... my opponent wants to end tax credits for wind energy producers,” he said.
“Think about what that would mean for a community like Pueblo. The wind industry supports about 5,000 jobs across this state. Without those tax credits, 37,000 American jobs, including potentially hundreds of jobs right here, would be at risk,” the president said.
Vestas has indicated that it may have to lay off up to 1,600 Coloradoans within a year if the tax credit is not extended.
Of course, the president's position on a tax credit extension is well known. But the Romney aides' comments have made the tax credit ripe for commentary from the stump.
In response to the president's comments, the Romney campaign issued a statement describing the candidate as a strong support of wind power "who appreciates the industry’s extraordinary technological progress and its important contributions to America’s energy supply."
“Unfortunately," the statement continued, "under President Obama’s approach of massive subsidies and handouts, the industry has lost 10,000 jobs while growth in wind power has slowed every single year of his term. Now he wants to ‘double down’ for another year on this failed approach at a cost of $12 billion.”
The campaign said Romney would prefer to "remove regulatory barriers, support free enterprise and market-based competition, and reward technological innovation.”
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