President-elect Barack Obama, if you really want to bring change to Washington, then derail this proposed government bailout and nationalization of the American auto industry. Your support of this latest version of the bailout sends several hurtful signals.
We understand the pressure from Big Labor and Democratic leaders who have benefited from union support and we understand wanting to keep voters in Michigan and Ohio happy. And no one wants to be cast in the role of risking the jobs of a few million workers. Even President Bush looks to have succumbed to that pressure.
But we ask that you resist these political forces and look at what’s best for our country. It is not the nationalization of our auto industry.
The suggestion that a government-appointed “car czar” could “oversee” a successful reorganization of one or more of The Big Three automakers comes across more like a bad joke than an actual idea. You yourself have said that government has a poor record of running companies.
To risk billions of taxpayer dollars in a government-run gambit that — even if it worked — would put other industries at a disadvantage to the kinds of global competitors we once decried as unfairly dependent on government protection would be unconscionable and antithetical to our free-enterprise system.
Economic experts have argued that the amount of money the automakers need actually is tens of billions of dollars more than the executives are seeking. Meanwhile, simple math shows that if General Motors alone is burning through $4 billion a month, it is logical to assume that our new car czar would be back again and again, asking an invested Congress for more and more.
At a time when taxpayers are weathering a recession and government commitments to protect the credit markets could reach $8 trillion, we shouldn’t try to prop up automakers whose own mistakes hobbled them long before the market meltdown.
Your plan, President-elect Obama, to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure and green-energy projects makes more sense, and could include retraining and job opportunities for Big Three employees.
Comments from Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi miss the point. Detroit executives don’t need “haircuts” or stern lectures on how they spend their money or what type of cars they should make.
The Democrats who control Congress seem increasingly bent on approving some type of bailout, and Bush doesn’t want to see the auto industry crumble on his watch.
You can stop this debacle, sir. If you oppose this scheme, your colleagues in Congress will back down.
You campaigned against the corrupting influence of special interests. Standing up for your principles now won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.
