Monday, June 06, 2011

Why Does John Boener Hate America?

 
Seriously. He opposes bailing out GM and Chrysler
 
Now, to the extent that he highlights Ford as a model of how an auto company should have been run ahead of the greatest economic collapse in American history, he has a point. Ford managed to skirt the troubles of GM and Chrysler. But Ford also benefits from the concessions GM and Chrysler negotiate with suppliers and unions, as they can rightly ask those same groups for the same deals. So to say Ford had no benefit from bailouts is childish and silly.
 
The government's job should not be to prevent failure, but it surely should be to protect individuals from falling too hard, too fast, in too great a number. When there's as many as a million jobs on the line, the government has a duty to respond.
 
And Boener himself ought to be looking into why there are only three large American auto makers, and how much have Republican tax cuts allowed the situation to get to such an extreme oligopoly.