"I'm in charge !"
Posted on 12/13/2008 7:40:54 AM PST by St. Louis Conservative
In the Senate's Thursday night automobile showdown, the United Auto Workers said "No thanks" to a bailout with strings attached. Most Senate Republicans took them at their word and voted to block the bill. But within hours, President Bush blinked and Treasury is now scrambling to use money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Who'd have thought Mr. Bush would want to join the long line of Detroit executives in caving to the UAW?
Senate Republicans had more gumption. Led by Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, they asked the auto workers to show they were serious about making Detroit competitive again. In exchange for a lifeline from Washington, Mr. Corker wanted the union to set a "date certain" in 2009 for lowering the Detroit Three's hourly labor costs to the average of foreign-owned auto makers in the U.S. He also wanted creditors to bring down Detroit's total debt by two-thirds through an equity swap, making sure debtholders share the cost of restructuring.
The union's counteroffer was that it would bring down labor costs in 2011, when its current contracts run out. Maybe we missed something, but we thought GM and Chrysler were facing bankruptcy now, not in three years. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor, that sounds like "taxpayer money today for reforms that may or may not come tomorrow."
Thursday's showdown marked an important political moment for the Republican Party. By refusing to write a blank check to Detroit, Senate Republicans have started to reclaim some credibility on fiscal policy and the role of government in the economy. They did so standing up to a Republican President who doesn't want any more bad headlines, as well as to Democrats who will blame the GOP if the auto makers collapse.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Going to have to rename the program “Troubled Asses Relief Program” in honor of the UAW.
Now, all we need are 19 more conservative senators with cajones, and viola! You have a chance to stop the bleeding, both financially, and culturally.
5.56mm
The UAW, like the Beg Three bound together with it, are two dinosaurs engaged in a death grip about to go over the side of a cliff.
The next automobile could very well be a Toyota, a Honda, a Nissan, a Kia, or a Mercedes.
Saturn may survive, but as a company independent from GM.
Doubtful.
La-La Unionland.
I wonder how they will like NO pay and benefits vs reduced pay and benefits.
But all this aside, we are staring revolt in the face if we think that the public will sit still for a depression while the CEOs and Wall Street bankers pay themselves huge bonuses out of bailout money.
If Bush thinks this is going to get him good headlines ... or somehow endear him to the hard left at the 11th hour, he's delusional.
Precisely
I wish Bush could just fade away. He has a become a huge disappointment to me.
“Who’d have thought Bush would cave to unions...?” Bush has been a fiscal leftist for 8 years. Spending taxdollars like water and wanting to have 100 million Mexicans invade the country...all collecting welfare, selling drugs or spreading TB and worse. Ain’t it grand to elect the lesser of evils! But of course, as a conservative, I’m just a silly, dangerous reactionary.
Call me cynical, but I bet the senators knew this was going to happen, so felt free to vote against it. If they knew Bush would do this, their vote doesn’t prove anything about their backbone.
Always pays to read the sentence immediately below the headline (at the source).
How nice to see McConnell finally doing what he was elected to do in the first place...protect the nation and the public from the left. Now if only he had voted against the Bush/Reid/Pelosi scam, trillion dollar, pork laden bailout!
well GWB is just another in a longline of Bushwhackers like his old man...I really have remorse that I ever voted for the tard.
This is exactly what my husband said to me, I think you are both right. They knew Bush would get it through anyway. We are so screwed.
The political leadership of the U.S. has no idea how to stop this economic collapse.
George W. Bush, the Congress and the incoming president are in full panic mode.
They know we are going to be in a world of massive hurt from sea to shining sea.
There is no leadership left in our government.
They are reacting to "boogeymen" fears in their heads, such as civil unrest and insurrection, massive unemployment, martial law, hyperinflation and their own legacy of leadership failure.
The truth: Nobody's in charge. They are just flailing around grasping at the debris hoping not to be sucked down with the sinking ship.
Me, too.
I thank him for his dedication to our national security, but can't help wishing he'd spent some time thinking about our economic security (i.e. Capitalism) too.
I don't know how shoveling $15 billion at the problem without addressing the crippling labor costs is going to do anything but lose $15 billion.
I could not agree with you more. We are absolutely bereft of leadership in this country.
Saturn has lost money every year since it started. It was propped up by GM only as a PR sales gimmick.
I wonder if UAW honchos washed their asses, they’re about to be kissed by a President.
Compare President Bush’s action with President Reagan and the air traffic controller’s union.
Spot on but what do you bet that "middle America" (not GEOgraphically but demographically, the ones you can always count on) will not riot, storm DC or be part of an insurrection? I think there will be unrest and even rioting in some cases but it will be interesing to see who's doing the rioting, they've done it in the past.
That’s what happens when you run a Senator rather than a Gov. They are followers and not leaders as well as entrenched in District of Corruption ways.
He made a huge point of vetoing pork and then flew to sign on with a pork laden bill. May have been the dumbest campaign move ever.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Yes, somehow just when I try to view him in a positive light he does something that reminds me just how terrible a President he is.
I did. My point concurs with the sub-headline.
Ok, I see that now.
Bush is very reliable. He never fails to disappoint.
I voted for McCain but he would have been 4 more years of the same--a big disappointment.
Republican Senate leadership since 1994:
Dole,Lott,Frist, McConnell.
Presidential candidates since 1994: Dole, Bush, Bush, McCain.
Any questions?
“He has a become a huge disappointment to me.”
Yep. In one particular way, the campaign rhetoric we heard was probably accurate- McCain (good on national defense, bad when it comes to fiscal conservatism, bad on immigration) would probably have been more of the same.
Saturn was originally founded as a co-managed entity, between the UAW and GM. If GM sells off the Saturn division, the UAW stake disappears also, and without this albatross weighing down every decision made by the joint labor-management board, the manufacturing facility stands to become a quite profitable and competitive small to mid-sized automobile manufacturer.
This explains the “money-losing” aspect of Saturn. Remove the UAW, and it becomes as good a competitor as Nissan or Kia or even BMW.
They steal all your groceries, throw back a stale crust, then they steal even that back from you.
Hooray for the GOP!
/s
If’n I was a Texan, I’d want him to go back to New England where he really belongs.
I was just out at a shopping mall and the place was jammed with people Christmas shopping. Not for the first (or 400th) time I'm asking: What economic collapse?
Recession, maybe. But collapse? Meltdown? All the other hysterical words people are using don't apply. Unemployment is the highest it's been in years but it's still in single digits. I remember when it was much worse than it is now, and we came through okay.
There is a downturn going on. But don't call it a collapse until Obama has spent another couple trillion!
And check out the chain restaurants tonight. Jammed.
Some recession.
Amen...Amen...Amen.
Given, the impending depression and the Blago Scandal, we may be in better shape with Obama. If we can only prevent the U.S. from adding an S. and an R. onto the end of its name, we should be golden.
Ditto
"I'm in charge !"
Good Lord. Boy, I forgot about that one. LOL
I’d sleep a little better at night after January if “the other Al” were in charge...
A Kentucky Ping y'all...
Hey Bush - - beat it, will ya? Just go away. Please.
—we are staring revolt in the face if we think that the public will sit still for a depression while the CEOs and Wall Street bankers pay themselves huge bonuses out of bailout money.—
Exactly. Actually, the automakers and the UAW dug their own graves, but that’s no reason for innocent workers to suffer. How you square this circle, I don’t know, but you can’t let millions of innocent workers hit the street with nothing but 13 weeks of unemployment insurance to keep their heads above water. What’s next for them? Skid row? WalMart? McDonalds? Where is the justice in that?
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