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In Florida, Romney raises cash, bashes Obama

By Marc Caputo and Adam C. Smith, McClatchy Newspapers –

TAMPA, Fla.—Mitt Romney swung through Florida on Thursday, picking up more than $2 million in political contributions while bashing President Barack Barack Obama as an ineffective leader.

Romney pointed out that, earlier in the day, the Senate scuttled the president’s budget.

“The number of senators who voted for the Obama budget was zero.. He has shown a remarkable lack of leadership,” Romney said during an evening fundraiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

“This is an individual who has not been in a leadership capacity before and is learning on the job,” Romney said. “This vote is another example of people in Washington seeing that this president can not get the job done.”

While Romney’s speeches in South Florida and Tampa Bay were long on criticisms of Obama, they were short on specifics.

Romney’s attack on the president’s spending record left unclear how the former Massachusetts governor’s largely vague budget plans — cutting taxes and ramping up defense spending — will reign in the country’s deficit. He has avoided identifying tax loopholes he would eliminate or specifically where he would make dramatic budget cuts required to make a real dent in the deficit.

In an interview with local media in Tampa Wednesday, Romney mentioned eliminating subsidies for the National Endowment of the Arts and Amtrak, which make up a fraction of federal spending. And in his public remarks, Romney drew a standing ovation when he promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which he said would cut nearly $1 trillion by 2016.

But in addition to spending tens of billions of dollars to expand health care coverage, the health care law also includes provisions to reduce the deficit, such as taxing high-end health care plans, charging fees to health insurers and slowing the growth of Medicare spending.

“If you keep a trillion more every year than you take in, then you get to the point of being Greece,” Romney said in Coral Gables.

Romney’s speech at the Biltmore lasted about 13 minutes. He was introduced by former Congressman Lincoln Diaz Balart, who praised the Republican presidential candidate as the “clear leader” the nation needs.

“Gosh,” Romney gushed before his 13-minute speech. “You really ought to be in Congress again. “The energy. The Cuban American energy and passion is so wonderful.”

Romney was welcomed to Florida by a Democratic assault for his past ties with Bain Capital, a venture capital company that bought a Miami business, Dade Behring, which eventually closed.

Romney’s campaign and Bain Capital said the company’s management of Dade Behring helped stall the demise of the company. Some Dade Behring former workers, however, fault the company for its management.

Romney also faced criticism for hosting a fundraiser at the Star Island home of Phil Frost, who runs a pharmaceutical company that makes a type of birth control that Romney had bashed on the campaign trail during the Republican primary.

Romney said the president and Democrats are trying to shift the focus of the campaign away from the economy.

“One of the things that’s been most disappointing to me over these last several months is watching this president divide America,”’ Romney said. In the interest of his re-election he’s trying to find some way to talk about something other than his record and to find someone else to blame for the challenges people feel.”

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