Republicans Will “Bankrupt The Middle Class” Says Administration Responsible For Trillion Dollar Budget Deficits

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Written By:
Rob Port

Mar 15, 2012
1:02pm

Today Vice President Joe Biden hit Republicans for their failure to support the auto bailouts, which we’re apparently supposed to believe were a success:

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden made an aggressive entry into the 2012 campaign Thursday, calling out Mitt Romney and the other Republican presidential hopefuls by name for their failure to support the auto bailout.

In his first major campaign address, Biden cast President Barack Obama as an advocate for the middle class, while labeling Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as protectors of the privileged.

“If you give any one of these guys the keys to the White House, they will bankrupt the middle class,” Biden said at a United Auto Workers hall in Toledo in the politically important state of Ohio.

Biden directed much of his fire at Romney, the GOP front-runner. He singled out the former Massachusetts governor, a native of the U.S. auto industry’s home base of Michigan, for saying the government should let the auto industry go bankrupt and that a bailout would turn the car companies into the “living dead.”

“Gov. Romney’s predictions of a living dead? We have now living proof: a million jobs saved, 200,000 new jobs created,” Biden said as the crowd of about 500 erupted in cheers.

I don’t know about a million jobs saved, or hundreds of thousands of jobs created. Certainly the Obama administration’s claims about job creation have been suspect in the past. What’s real, though, is the fact that the taxpayers are looking at a $23.6 billion loss from the auto bailouts.

Meaning that even if the Obama administrations jobs created/saved numbers are accurate, we’re talking about a total cost to the taxpayers of at least $19,666 per job. That’s hardly a “success.”

Anyone calling the bailouts a “success” need look no further than the Chevy Volt, which was a sop to demands from the Obama administration that domestic car companies make a “green car.” The Volt has sold so poorly that GM has suspended production.

The auto bailouts were great policy if you happen to be an auto industry executive, or a union worker. But for the average taxpayer? It was a bad deal.