I hope it isn’t a pander.
The first part - govt loan for automation - does sound like a pander.
A private business that wasn’t loaded down with toxic unions and/or poor management ought to be able to get private money for this sort of thing. Subsidising a private industry with public money is a **Welfare Program**.
Hope McCain isn’t going to make a habit of this. But maybe the loan will come with strings attached that make it a better use of public money.
It’s a pander. Government loans and tax credits. Yeah drilling for oil will help, but the fundamental reason Michigan is in bad shape is that its basic industries are not doing well. Why is that? Why are American car manufacturers doing poorly? Answer that and that’s a real substantive fix. Dump the unions and guess what, things will get better without the tax subsidies that BMW and Toyota wring out of local governments to build plants in right to work states. Dump CAFE and some other regulations too and guess, what, American manufacturing gets competitive again.