Clinton blasts Bush for not stopping a project Bill OK'd

By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS — Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband's administration.

In response, the Clinton campaign said that Bill Clinton's administration had gotten assurances at the time it approved the deal that production would remain inside the United States, and that the shift of jobs to China didn't occur until under the Bush administration.

“Hillary Clinton must have been hoping we Hoosiers have short memories,â€