Auto bailout

Romney Loves American Cars; Obama Loves American Car Workers

Leo Gerard — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:17:49 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, son of an American Motors CEO, naturally says he loves American cars. His wife, as he put it, “drives a couple of Cadillacs.” He’s installing an elevator in his beach mansion just for his cars. Though a millionaire, he rejected flying his five sons to a vacation destination, instead packing them into a car, then strapping their dog Seamus’ carrier to the car roof for a ride that, shall we say, challenged the canine’s intestinal fortitude.

President Barack Obama, by contrast, has given some love to American car companies and American car workers. He rescued Chrysler and General Motors, preserving the American icon companies and hundreds of thousands of American car manufacturing jobs. He imposed sanctions on Chinese tires that received improper export subsidies, a move that saved thousands of U.S. tire-building jobs. And now he’s challenging illegally-subsidized Chinese auto parts to sustain American companies and workers.

Romney has blasted Obama every auto-manufacturing-job-preserving step of the way. On the auto bailout, Romney admonished, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.” He condemned the tariffs on Chinese tires. Romney claims he loves American cars. But the actions of his private equity firm, Bain Capital, in buying companies that were “pioneers” in offshoring American jobs, suggest he’s fine with American firms making cars and car parts overseas. Obama, by contrast, took the action necessary to ensure American cars are made in America by American companies employing American workers.

Here’s what Romney actually said about his adoration for cars:

“I love cars. I love American cars. And long may they rule the world.”

When it came to helping them continue to rule the world, however, Romney dissed Detroit.

President Obama embraced Detroit. He took money from the Wall Street bailout fund and used it to help GM and Chrysler continue to rule the world. GM regained the title of world’s largest car company in January and hundreds of thousands of auto and auto part manufacturing workers retained their jobs.

Similarly, in September of 2009, President Obama imposed duties on unfairly traded Chinese tires. My union, the United Steelworkers (USW), filed the trade case that led to those duties. The sanctions saved thousands of tire-making jobs in the United States and contributed to creation of 1,000 more.

Earlier this year, the USW, the Alliance for American Manufacturing and 189 members of Congress urged Obama to take yet another trade action, this one to protect American auto parts manufacturers and their workers. The request followed publication of four reports detailing China’s illegal export subsidies to its auto parts sector. Nations may subsidize manufacturing for internal consumption, but international law prohibits subsidizing products to be exported because it distorts the market, causing the bankruptcy of manufacturers in countries where the artificially cheap products are sold.

The auto parts complaint says that forbidden export subsidies, including cash grants, preferential tax treatment and other perks valued at $1 billion over the past three years enabled China to jump from 16^th largest producer of auto parts in 2002, when it exported $7 billion in parts, to 5^th largest last year when it exported $70 billion.

The upshot is that imports of auto parts from China increased seven fold, contributing to the loss of nearly half of all U.S. auto parts jobs – 400,000 – since 2000. An example is Olymco, Inc. a Canton, Ohio, metal-plating company where 100 workers, members of the USW, once made auto parts. Now, mainly as a result of subsidized Chinese competition, only 11 workers remain.

The predatory Chinese practices encourage U.S. auto parts makers to offshore manufacturing, and now some of the largest U.S. auto parts companies produce in China.

Sensata, a car parts manufacturer in Freeport, Ill. is among those on the way to China. The 145 workers in Freeport, who make sensors and controls, are training their Chinese replacements.

These workers may return to China to join many there who are packed into dormitories that rival turn of the 20^th Century U.S. tenements for slum conditions. Romney described workers in a Chinese appliance factory he visited:

“working, working, working as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour. They cared about their jobs; they wouldn’t even look up as we walked by.”

That’s right. These exploited workers kept their heads down. These 50-cent-an-hour laborers feared they’d be fired for the audacity of looking at a quarter billionaire American visitor.

Sensata is owned by Bain Capital, the company Romney founded in 1984, the private equity firm that Romney claims he left in 1999, even though it continued to pay him millions for a decade afterward. The workers at Sensata have publically begged Romney to intervene with Bain on their behalf to keep the factory in the United States. They’ve collected 35,000 signatures supporting their cause. They’ve got the backing of the Freeport City Council, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. They’re camping outside the factory in a tent city called Bainport. But Romney hasn’t responded. No word from the candidate who claims to love American cars.

He loves owning ‘em. He relishes riding them up and down on elevators. But when it comes to showing a little love for car businesses and car workers, Romney’s frigid. Just ask the workers cooling their heels at Bainport.

The auto parts case is Obama’s ninth trade action against China. The Washington Post wrote:

“The Obama administration has steadily amped up its enforcement actions against China at the WTO.”

Obama has repeatedly confronted countries whose illegal trade practices threaten American companies and workers, filing twice as many cases in one term as Bush did in two. He has tangibly demonstrated his love for American cars and American car workers.

Better Off? Hell Yes!

Leo Gerard — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 10:24:32 -0400

Damn right America is better off than it was four years ago.

Four years ago was September 2008. George W. Bush was president and Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers was collapsing. It was a time of fear. It was a time of panic about the future. Recalling that anxiety is unsettling. But it’s important for comparison sake.

Lehman filed for bankruptcy this week four years ago – Sept. 15, 2008. Global financial markets spun into a panic. Credit markets froze worldwide. The stock market plunged. GM and Chrysler fell into crisis. Foreclosures were spiking and housing prices plummeting. Main Street shops and factories couldn’t get ordinary loans essential to sustain routine business. Nearly half a million workers lost their jobs that month. It was the ninth consecutive month of massive job losses. The Bush administration had converted a vibrant economy and budget surplus it had inherited from former President Bill Clinton into the Great Recession and massive deficits. America was still mired in two wars, including one Bush started on false pretenses.

Now, in September 2012, global financial markets have stabilized. Credit is available to Main Street. GM and Chrysler are building cars and creating jobs. Unemployment is declining as the private sector has added jobs to the economy every month for the past 30. The value of housing is rising once again, creating wealth for the middle class. Now there’s a financial reform law to prevent another Wall Street bailout. There’s Obamacare to help families retain and secure health insurance. The war in Iraq is over and Osama bin Laden is dead. Is America better off than it was four years ago? Hell, yes it is!

September 2012 can’t be described as boom times. But it’s sure not the dread-filled days of September 2008. As former President Clinton so eloquently said last week in his convention speech, describing the Republican attitude toward President Obama:

“We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”

Republicans want Americans to put them back in charge. Their presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, has promised to “restore” America, to return the country to the days before President Obama.

The Romney plan to “restore” America involves repealing, revoking and rejecting every advance President Obama has achieved, including health insurance reform and Wall Street regulation. As Andy Borowitz suggested, if Romney could, he’d revive Osama bin Laden and kill Detroit. Anything to take America back(wards).

Luckily, Romney wouldn’t be able to undo President Obama’s auto bailout – although he opposed it from day one, urging “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He wrote:

“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

Well, GM and Chrysler got bailouts, and both are doing fine, thank you, Mr. Romney. In fact, in January GM reclaimed for a few months the title of world’s largest car manufacturer. Both companies are repaying the government loans and 1.45 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout, according to the nonpartisan Center for Automotive Research.

Would America be better off without GM and Chrysler? No, it would not. That according to 1.45 million employed people.

Also luckily, Romney couldn’t undo President Obama’s stimulus. He’d like to, though. His campaign is repeating the false GOP meme that the money was wasted.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs. Romney would have preferred no stimulus. He’d have abandoned those workers – your father-in-law, your kid, your neighbor – rendering them unable to pay their mortgages, unable to support their families, unable to imagine a future.

Would America be better off without the stimulus? No, it would not. That according to 3.3 million employed people.

A President Romney could, however, reverse the financial and health insurance reform measures. And he’s pledged to do that “on day one.” Without financial reform, Wall Street could resume, unfettered, the same risky betting that plunged the country into the Great Recession.

Without the health reform law, insurance companies would immediately cancel coverage for millions of young adults now on their parents’ plans and cut off untold millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions and those who have exceeded the now-banned lifetime caps. In addition, senior citizens would have to pay more for prescription drugs and preventative care.

Would America be better off without the financial and health insurance reforms? No, it would not. That according to Americans who would be sicker and poorer and at greater economic risk without the laws.

Romney also promises to restore America to the Bush days of special deals for the rich and up the ante by giving the 1 percent additional tax reductions. Bush didn’t pay for his tax cuts, resulting in massive deficits, and Romney hasn’t specified how he would either.

Would the country be better off if the rich paid even less in taxes? No, it would not. That according to the 99 percent and President Obama. He pledges to end the Bush tax cuts for those making over a quarter million and begin paying down the nation’s debts.

President Obama plans to take the country forward, to create a better tomorrow.

As former President Clinton walked onto the convention floor last week, the Fleetwood Mac song “Don’t Stop” played in the background. This is the refrain:

“Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.”

Yesterday’s gone. Thank goodness because America is much better off than it was four years ago. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Romney, Ryan Don’t Get the Average Joe

Leo Gerard — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:39:18 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he’s refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate “small minded.” Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

Maybe so. But the American people, the Average Jane and Joe, do care whether Romney used tricks and loopholes and offshore accounts to manipulate the tax system and pay nothing. And they’re not “small minded,” as Romney accused them of being, for wanting to know.

For them, a quarter billionaire who paid nothing or paid a rate lower than the middle class lacks the principles they like in a president. The vast majority of voters aren’t going to dissect the budget proposed by Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, but they will vote based on the values it reveals. Romney’s ability to rattle off technical details won’t decide the election. Morality, or Jane and Joe’s perception that Ryan and Romney’s policies lack it, will.

Other millionaires have led the nation. In fact, the majority of those in the past presidents club were millionaires. But some of the nation’s wealthy presidents had spent time with America’s Average Janes and Joes and understood their dreams and struggles and were sympathetic to them.

Though raised on an estate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew suffering firsthand after being cut down by polio as a young man. He spent long periods with working men and women in Southern recuperation centers as he tried in vain to get his legs to work again. Immediately on his election to the presidency, he launched programs to aid the impoverished.

By contrast, Romney and Ryan, both raised in privilege, have demonstrated remarkable insensitivity to everyday Americans.

Romney, scion of a Detroit car company executive, said as GM and Chrysler struggled in the midst of the Great Recession, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He’d have countenanced an uncontrolled bankruptcy for the two corporations, costing tens of thousands of middle-class workers at assembly plants, car dealerships and auto part manufacturers their jobs, their homes and their hopes. He’d have done nothing and let them all suffer. There’s a certain carelessness, a heartlessness to that. Those aren’t values many middle-class workers cherish in a president.

Ryan also grew up without worry about money, in a small town where his family owned a construction business and his father was a lawyer. Because his father died when Ryan was 16, Social Security helped him pay for college. Ryan’s plans, however, imperil Social Security for future generations, for the next decade’s 16 year olds who lose fathers.

Ryan sponsored legislation during the Bush administration to privatize Social Security, allowing the fund to be weakened by the draining of untold billions that would be risked on Wall Street, on the very stock market that crashed during the last year of Bush’s reign, sucking the value out of private pension funds. Many middle-class workers don’t find gambling with their retirement security attractive in a president.

Ryan and Romney are in trouble with America’s Average Janes and Joes over their tax proposals as well. Romney says he wants to cut income taxes by 20 percent for everyone, which he claims he would pay for by ending tax deductions. He has declined to specify which ones, however. Here’s what the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said about his plan: it would cost the wealthy like Ryan and Romney less and the Average Jane and Joe more.

That’s right. Specifically, the plan would reduce taxes each year for the nation’s wealthiest 5 percent, ranging from a cut of $1,800 for the least rich to nearly $250,000 for the most rich. For the other 95 percent of taxpayers, the nation’s middle class, Romney’s “tax cut” would mean a tax increase averaging $500 per household because, the Tax Policy Center said, tax breaks that the middle class depends on, like the one for mortgages, would disappear. The center said it was a fantasy for Romney to suggest he could fund his plan by eliminating only tax breaks for the rich.

The Average Jane and Joe may not read the entire report. But they do understand this one key fact: The Romney tax plan will cost them more and Romney less. Many will find the injustice of that to be unattractive in a president.

Similarly, Ryan’s budget “Roadmap” would also lower Romney’s tax rate. Ryan would require him to pay less than 1 percent. That’s because the vast majority of Romney's $21 million income in 2010 came from capital gains, interest and dividends, and Ryan would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Most middle-class household income, all of $50,000 a year and declining, comes from wages, not capital gains, interest and dividends. So those families would be paying rates way higher than 1 percent. In fact, the Tax Policy Center determined that Ryan’s budget would raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of wage earners.

The Average Jane and Joe may not memorize all those facts and figures. But they will recall that Ryan wants quarter billionaires to pay 1 percent and them to pay way more. That’s just galling. Far from what the middle class finds to be a desirable trait in a vice president.

When a reporter asked Romney about his tax rates last week, the Republican candidate had just finished lecturing the ensemble on the intricacies of his Medicare plan using a white board.

What Romney can’t comprehend is that for the middle class, it’s not the numbers.

What the Average Jane and Joe will recall is that Romney and Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, to destroy a beloved program on which the middle class depends. What they’ll know about Romney and Ryan is that their proposed policies show they don’t have a clue what it’s like to struggle. And don’t care. Carelessness is not a quality the middle class finds desirable in the occupants of the Oval Office.

American Workers: The Best Bet

Leo Gerard — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:35:05 -0500

Remember the fear in 2008? Think of the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Wall Street melting down. Pension savings disappearing. Housing values plunging and foreclosures skyrocketing. Three million workers losing their jobs.

It had all the makings of another Great Depression. As Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, he faced a dilemma. In this crisis he could play it safe and hold steady on his predecessor’s path of pampering the rich and pandering to corporations, pretending that possibly, eventually, some benefit would trickle down to workers. Or President Obama could keep candidate Obama’s promises of change.

He went with change. He focused on workers, believing restoration of the nation’s great middle would drive economic recovery for all. He secured an economic stimulus package and rescued the American auto industry. Both measures worked to halt, and eventually reverse, the previous year’s relentless economic decline. Both, as well as other changes President Obama has proposed, emphasize creating and securing jobs for everyday workers. He wagered on American workers. And it paid off.

As unemployment slowly eases, as the Big Three automakers report huge profits and hire workers, as the stock market slowly climbs and foreclosures slowly drop, Republicans, particularly the GOP presidential candidates, refute it all. They simply deny that the stimulus created the 1.2 to 3.3 million jobs that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports it did. They continue to insist that America should have let Detroit go bankrupt. Instead of betting on American workers, they would double down on Bush’s tax breaks for the rich, subsidies for fabulously profitable corporations and deregulation of Wall Street.

GOP front runner Mitt Romney supported the government bailout for Wall Street but opposed rescuing GM and Chrysler. Like so many Republicans, he’s all for preserving the jobs and institutions and million dollar bonuses for executives. But Republicans offer nothing but cutbacks and pain for workers.

They want to cut back food stamps, raise the retirement age, slash funds for education and Pell Grants for college, slice Medicaid and repeal the health care reform law that will lower the deficit while enabling 32 million uninsured American to get coverage. At the same time, all four GOP presidential contenders would lower or eliminate corporate taxes and further cut levies on the wealthiest so much that their budget plans would increase the national deficit that they’re so keen to criticize.

They’re betting that more tax cuts for the rich will prompt reinvestment and economic resurgence. That’s the gamble former President Bush took when he twice cut taxes on the wealthiest. After seven years, here’s how Bush’s bet on the rich paid off: the economy and jobs were contracting at an alarming rate. Remember the fear in 2008?

Now, three years later, after President Obama placed his faith in workers, the nation’s economic outlook is brighter. As is that of GM and Chrysler.

Both companies suffered managed bankruptcies. Tens of thousands of workers lost jobs. Retirees took health care benefit cuts. Remaining workers accepted pay reductions. Plants and dealerships closed. It was pain all around.

Now, GM is back as the world’s number one automaker, making the highest profits in its history. Chrysler is growing faster than any other American car company. Ford is investing $16 billion in its American operations and plans to bring thousands of jobs back from overseas. Altogether, the industry added 200,000 jobs. In addition, rescuing the industry meant preserving hundreds of thousands of jobs in auto parts factories across America, and all the service jobs they support.

Here’s what President Obama told the 2012 United Auto Workers convention about his wager on them:

“I placed my bet on American workers. And I’d make that same bet again any day of the week. Because three years later, that bet is paying off for America. Three years later, the American auto industry is back.”

In the past few weeks, President Obama has doubled down on his wager on working Americans. He has called for a tax break reversal – ending the deal corporations get for shipping jobs overseas and instead giving it to those who move jobs back on shore. And, just last week, he demanded an end to the $4 billion in subsidies that taxpayers give massively-profitable oil and gas companies, explaining:

“You can either stand up for oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people.”

Republicans immediately attacked the President for the proposal. They criticized him for talking to the auto workers as well. While Republicans regard workers in general as second class citizens, not to be given the deference they reserve for the rich, members of the GOP particularly despise auto workers because they’re members of a labor union. Republican lawmakers hate unions – maybe even more than they loathe President Obama. They can’t tolerate any organization of workers that succeeded in bargaining with fat cat factory owners for weekends off, paid sick days, good pensions and middle class wages, even though the GOP lawmakers themselves benefit from decades of union activism by receiving weekends off, paid sick days, good pensions and very decent wages.

Obama, by contrast, told the auto workers he was honored to be with them, to bet on them:

“It’s unions like yours that fought for jobs and opportunity for generations of American workers. It’s unions like yours that helped build an arsenal of democracy that defeated fascism. It is unions like yours that forged the American middle class – the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known.”

It’s a sure bet: Wagering on workers is a winner.