Tag Archives: Automotive Industry

Leaked GOP memo shows they’re out to bust the unions.

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There’s a fair argument to be made that bailing out the Big Three automotive companies for their own bad decisions is just throwing good money after bad, but it turns out that the GOP politicians that killed the bi-partisan auto bailout bill weren’t so much concerned about the money being put out as they were having a means of breaking the UAW. The folks on NBC’s Countdown managed to get ahold of a memo detailing as much:

I’m no fan of unions myself as I’ve said before on SEB, but the UAW was bending over backwards to meet the conditions being proposed by the bailout bill—it doesn’t do the UAW any good to have the Big Three go under after all—yet the Republicans killed the bill anyway. What’s really amazing about this is that Vice President Cheney himself warned his part that if they kill the auto bailout bill that it would be Herbert Hoover time all over again:

“The big question is what happens next, if the auto companies are still in business in January or March, whenever it happens to be, [there won’t be] much fallout,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told Politico. “But if something dire occurs, if one of the companies or more face bankruptcy or layoffs and that has a dramatic negative impact on communities, families or the economy, then I think there are some questions to be answered to think whether this might have been enough to keep them in business and help them survive.”

Administration officials have been warning for weeks that failure to pass the bill could lead to an even deeper recession.

That was the message Vice President Dick Cheney brought to a closed-door Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, reportedly warning that it’ll be “Herbert Hoover” time if aid to the industry was rejected, according to a senator familiar with the remarks. A Cheney spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the vice president’s remarks.

If the Big Three end up failing because of this you can bet your ass that Michigan, Ohio, and several other states that rely substantially on the domestic automotive industry aren’t going to forget who let the companies die and put millions out of work anytime soon. The fact that they did it just because they want to destroy organized labor only compounds the issue. You think things are bad now? Wait until the full impact of a bankrupt auto industry hits the economy.

Jon Stewart on why Congress should bailout the Big Three.

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I have to admit, it’s a compelling argument…

…though some would say I’m biased living in Michigan and all.

Found over at BD’s blog.

McCain advisor says: Let the Detroit automotive companies die.

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I guess McCain really is giving up on winning Michigan. I’m sure having one of your advisors tell Reuters that the government can’t save the automotive industry isn’t going to win over a lot of Michigan voters:

“I don’t think the government can rescue the industry,” Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Corp, told Reuters at an event in suburban Detroit.

“Whatever the government does, it should not take away the fundamentals of risk-taking. Sometimes it leads to rewards and sometimes consequences, downside,” she said. “In other words, the auto industry cannot be saved from its own bad bets.”

Fiorina also said it remained an open question whether the U.S. auto industry needed aid beyond the $25 billion of low-interest loans already approved by the Bush administration and said any additional aid “depends on the particulars of the circumstance.”

I wouldn’t have a problem with that argument except that McCain voted for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Apparently rich investment bankers are something the Government should save from their own bad bets, but rich automotive executives aren’t. Which group do you think employs more middle class workers? What does that tell you about who John McCain’s campaign thinks should be getting government help?