Mitt Romney has been taking some flak for his manufacturing positions recently. In a campaign stop in Iowa, Vice President Biden ripped into the GOP presidential contender for his history of outsourcing jobs. As the Associated Press reports:

Biden mocked Romney for allowing state contractors to set up call centers in India while he was Massachusetts governor, and said the Bain Capital private equity firm Romney once headed had shipped jobs overseas after acquiring companies in the 1990s.

“Mitt, thanks for the memories,” Biden said with a laugh, referring to a South Carolina photo album factory that closed after Bain Capital bought it.

Meanwhile, Romney got himself in a bit of trouble when he tried to joke with Wisconsin voters about the time his father closed factories in Michigan:

Romney’s story involved the time more than 50 years ago that his father, George, an American Motors executive, shut down a factory in Michigan and moved the work to Wisconsin. “Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan, and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign,” explained Romney, who described a subsequent campaign parade in which the school band marching with his father knew how to play Wisconsin’s fight song, but not Michigan’s.

Hopefully Governor Romney and all the other candidates will continue to push for pro-manufacturing solutions and give our country the national debate we deserve.