Posted on 10/13/2012 8:09:28 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
President Barack Obama sought on Saturday to sustain momentum from Vice President Joe Biden's strong debate showing by touting the benefits of one of his signature actions, the rescue of the U.S. auto industry, as he prepared for his next debate with Republican Mitt Romney.
"We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120813/AUTO01/208130392#ixzz29BxL8o6k
sheesh what has this writer been smoking
Momentum? LOL! I love the not so subtle bias.
Romney’s response to this needs to be that Obama bailed out the United Auto Worker’s Union, not the auto industry. Many companies, including airlines, have went through the legal bankruptcy channels and come back stronger than ever.
I’d also like to hear Mitt bring up Thomas Lauria and the Delphi non union workers that Obama illegally shafted during this process. Some of those workers lost their entire retirement.
????? I must have missed something.
I hope Romney hammers away at this! Why does 1 industry deserve so much government money over another? Or at all? This is legal theft at its worst!
But wasn’t it Bush that started the auto bailouts?
Not to mention the fact that Obama upended bankruptcy law and shafted the bondholders. Bankruptcy was the only fair and legal way to handle the situation, but Obama chose to violate the law to save his union buddies.
Where to start.
First, GM and Chrysler DID go bankrupt. Obama is trying to equate going bankrupt with going out of business, but that likely wouldn't have been the case. Romney needs to point this out. GM could have survived a normal bankruptcy, but they chose money from Obama in return for protection as Obama paid off the UAW at the expense of the bond holders.
Furthermore, Chrysler is now a foreign owned nameplate that builds many of its top of the line cars like the 300, Charger, and Challenger in other countries. Going from a US company to a foreign nameplate resulted directly from Obama's intervention.
And in spite of all of the money and effort Obama spent on this, he didn't fix the real reason that caused GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt in the first place. Namely, nobody was buying their products. In the early 70s, GM had 60% of the US market all by itself. Now, even counting foreign owned Chrysler as a domestic make, the US brands are doing well to get 50% of their home market. I see all of those Obama stickers on Toyotas, Hondas, and other foreign makes. They cheer Obama for supposedly fixing the US auto industry, but still won't buy its products.
Betting on the American workers? Not according to "General Motors is becoming China Motors".
Thankfully, Ford didn't screw over its bond holders in return for bailouts, so I can still support the US auto industry without supporting these policies.
Bush started it with the TARP loans, which have been paid back with interest. He did NOT screw over the bond holders to pay off the UAW.
Bush gave loans, the Kenyan did a pre-packaged bankruptcy bailout that crapped on dealerships, obliterated contract law as it relates to preferred bond holders, and gave 17% to the UAW while protecting union pay and benefits.
Exactly correct. He went about it in a more reasonable manner than did the imposter that is trying to take all the credit. Just like he does with Iraq.
The recent bailouts. Remember Chrysler and Iaccoca? Didn't they get a bailout in the late 1970s or early 1980s? Carter/Reagan time-frame?
For the GM et al fiasco, you are correct. IIRC, Rush Limbaugh explained it along the lines of "[Bush43] ...doesn't want the collapse of GM to happen on his watch..."
I'm sure you are aware of the subtlety of the rhetoric, but others may not be.
The difference is that GM did not go through a "normal" bankruptcy. Such a bankruptcy would have resulted in a re-negotiation of the UAW contract. As it is, that contract, and the associated extremely high cost of labor, stayed in-tact. Bottom line: tax-payer money was substituted for cutting costs.
So, part of the reason for the need for either a bailout or normal bankruptcy remains. Therefore, especially if 0bama is re-elected, we, the American people, will get a chance to bailout Government Motors yet again!
I don't understand why Romney/Ryan don't present more of the truth about this - it's about the only semi-positive element (at least to 0bama's mind-numbed faithful) remaining in 0bama's record.
That was also a loan, that was paid back with interest, and without screwing over the bond holders.
Perhaps the author is unaware that the government didn't prevent the bankruptcy, it just made it more expensive to the taxpayer, funded the UAW that made it necessary, and kicked the problem down the road.
He has to be helping out the toilet paper industry because I’ve never seen someone so full of crap as him.
One word - DELPHI.
We’ve been in court for 2 years, hitting brick walls with this administration. Plenty of proof that we were pushed under the bus, and it’s getting pretty crowded under there.
I was hoping that Ryan had a response to Biden about GM bailout like: The thousands of employee’s who lost their pensions due to the bailout (non union), the stock-holders, etc.
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