At a campaign event in Glen Allen, Virginia on Friday, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said that Mitt Romney, who founded Bain Capital, had proven he knew that small businesses were the backbone of the American economy because he had started “small businesses” himself.

“[Mitt Romney] has proven, through starting up small businesses, through turning around struggling businesses, through creating businesses we all know — Sports Authority, Bright Horizons, Staples — this is a person who is living proof, and experience, that knows that if you have a small business, you built that small business. That’s the backbone of our economy.”

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Ryan voted against the Small Business Jobs Act, which provided tax cuts and increased lending streams to small business owners and the president signed in September 2010.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses, which has endorsed a large number of Republican candidates, released an index earlier this week that found small business optimism dropped for the second month in a row.

But, ass I.H.S. Global Insight economist Gregory Daco told the L.A. Times, “The uncertainty is still a major factor in terms of the uncertainty for fiscal policy — who will win the elections, how policy will shift.”

Recently the Commerce Department released data that indicated retail sales rose in July for the first time in four months. Staples, however, the company Ryan called out in his speech that is only publicly traded, reported this week that its shares had hit to their lowest level since 2003.

Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Aug. 17, 2012.

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Additional reporting by Kay Steiger.

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(h/t: Daily Kos)