Bush: America Can’t Stand Failing Auto Industry
President Bush is suggesting that America wouldn’t be able to take the failures of the “big 3” automakers.
WASHINGTON – The White House says the weak economy can’t afford the collapse of the nation’s automakers.
White House press secretary Dana Perino cited the latest bad economic news — a jump in jobless claims to the highest level in 26 years — in arguing for Senate passage of a bailout package for the Big 3 automakers.
Perino said Thursday that the economy is in such a weakened state that adding another 1 million people to the unemployment rolls from an auto industry failure is not possible. She said: “We don’t think the economy can sustain it.”
What’s amazing to me is that the politicians seem to think America can stand endless amounts of government spending on bailouts. They think American can stand that spending which keeps taxes high at a time when what Americans really need is to keep some of their own money in their pockets.
I’ll not deny that letting the automakers fails would mean some pretty rough economic times in this country. But isn’t it getter to face those rough times now rather than later? Despite the claims of politicians no bailout is going to change the way these companies are run. They might tweak a few things and get a decade or two of solvency out of the deal, but eventually they’ll be back at the federal trough. Because they’ll still be laboring under ridiculous labor contracts, and having already gotten one bailout why should they run their business in a manner that would keep them from needing another?
Bailouts create the expectation of more bailouts.
And frankly, I think that what America really can’t afford is to keep playing this bailout game.
Rather than kicking this smelly economic can down the road so that future generations have to deal with it, let’s fix it now. Let’s let the auto industry fail so that it can find a way to be successful again without burdening the taxpayers.
