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Factory Backdrop for Boehner Speech Received Government Funds

Updated: 6:40 p.m.

Speaker John Boehner delivered a speech on job creation today at an Ohio facility that received $750,000 from the Ohio state government and is owned by a parent company that has received more than $22 million from President Barack Obama’s stimulus law.

Boehner gave the speech at a ThyssenKrupp Bilstein factory in Hamilton, Ohio, that produces vehicle shock absorbers.

In 2011, the Ohio Department of Development awarded the company $750,000 in grants designed to lure the company to relocate its factory in Germany to Ohio. The grants were for the purchase of new machinery and equipment, according to Katie Sabatino, a spokeswoman for the department.

The company’s investment in the overall project is $6.4 million, Sabatino added.

ThyssenKrupp received more than $22 million from the stimulus law, according to Recovery.gov, primarily to the company’s elevator division. None of those funds went to the Ohio facility.

According to the Middletown Journal, Boehner decried new government regulations and the federal corporate tax rate in the speech.

“At a time when the American people are still asking the question ‘Where are the jobs?’ Washington continues to create more regulations than our economy can afford, more regulations than I think that we need, and we’ve got this crushing burden of debt that continues to hang over our heads,” Boehner said, according to the Journal.

A spokesman for Boehner declined to provide a copy of Boehner’s prepared remarks.

Democrats said it was hypocritical of Boehner to deliver a speech on job creation at a facility that received government funds and is owned by a company that has received millions from the stimulus law.

“Speaker Boehner gives new meaning to the word hypocrisy by delivering a ‘jobs’ speech to workers whose jobs he was against creating,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Boehner opposed the stimulus law and has argued that “government does not create jobs” in past remarks.

“The DCCC attack is factually wrong,” Boehner’s spokesman said. “The Speaker knows that employers, especially small businesses, are the key to creating more American jobs. That’s why the House has already passed nearly 30 jobs bills, and we’ll keep passing them, and keep up the pressure on the Senate and the White House to act.”

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