The business model on which Mitt Romney built his private-equity, outsourcing career and fortune at  Bain Capital “has made our economy weaker and our society more unequal, it has hollowed out our tax base, and it has wreaked havoc on our communities,” said the AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement from its August meeting this week in Washington, D.C.

While Romney prefers to keep details of his record in the shadows, the council said:

This year, thanks to the spotlight the presidential campaign has shone on the activities of Bain Capital and the personal tax returns of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, we can see this destructive model at work in all its detail.

The first step in the Romney model is to buy companies with borrowed money, saddle them with debt then then cut costs and investment to the bone to pay back the debt—all made possible, said the council, by an unjustifiable corporate tax subsidy that says interest on debt is deductible from corporate tax returns while dividends paid to stockholders are not.

The next step in the Romney business model, says the council:

is outsourcing—closing plants and selling assets, using the returns to pay back the loans, and then contracting production out to low-wage factories in other countries, usually where repressive governments prevent workers from organizing their own unions.  

The outsourcing is encouraged an even promoted, said  the council by:

trade policies aimed at protecting the overseas investments made by multinational companies that happen to be headquartered on U.S. territory rather than creating jobs in America or opening up overseas markets for the export of U.S. goods. Under pressure from businesses built on the outsourcing model, our trade negotiators routinely agree to provisions in our trade agreements that provide incentives for the export of good jobs overseas.

But it’s not just the companies that profit from the offshoring tax breaks, “the greatest tax breaks go to go to the people who run leveraged buyout firms,” like Bain Capital, said the council. Thanks to what is known as “carried interest” the income the CEO’s earn in the way of fees and their share of the profits is taxed at just 15 percent.

Vast fortunes [are] earned almost tax free. In Mitt Romney’s case, $22 million per year, on which he pays less than 15 percent in income taxes.

How serious, the council asked, are the fiscal consequences of Romney-style capitalism?

We face another fiscal showdown early next year over scheduled across-the-board sequestration budget cuts that eventually will total $1.2 trillion over 10 years. These across-the-board budget cuts are unnecessary. Simply ending the tax subsidy for capital gains, ending the tax deferral of offshore corporate profits and ending the tax subsidy of corporate interest payments—which are all critical pillars of Romney-style crony capitalism—would generate more than $1.2 trillion in revenue.

This fall’s presidential election will give the American people a chance to decide on what kind of economy the nation wants, said the Council

an economy where business brings jobs home, creates new jobs in America and pays its fair share of taxes, or an economy where a few financial wizards get rich hollowing out our economy and our tax base.

Read the full statement here.