Late Thursday night (12/11/08) the Senate rejected a deal passed earlier in the week by the House that would have extended about $14 billion in loans to the auto industry. Democrats in the Senate and the White House and the incoming Obmaa administration supported the bailout. Senate Republicans rejected the bill because for two reasons.
First, GOP hostility to labor unions is palpable. Senate Republicans saw this as an opportunity to break one of America's few remaining strong unions, the UAW. Calls for the UAW to accept drastic pay and benefits cuts on top of the concessions already agreed to was, naturally of course, resisted by the UAW. The GOP, though, wanted more.
The GOP might get their wish and break the union, but in the process they'll destroy GM and perhaps Chrysler and Ford too. And, of course, the hundreds of thousands of others in the auto industry food supply. Quite the GOP legacy for 2008, don't you think?
Second, the GOP rejected the deal because of conservative ideology. The GOP insists that bailing our all these private enterprises is antithetical to the free market. They have a point, and I am inclined to agree that, at some point, we must let some of these companies go. Let's face it, GM, Chrysler and Ford have produced lots of stinkers over the years. Should we reward bad business models just because they happen to be big? No one has proposed a bailout for Starbucks, which shuttered 700 stores in the US and Australia.
Yet, this insistence on ideology is misguided. There is a time for ideology and there is a time for pragmatism. The Democratic rescue plan was a loan - eventually (if the companies survive) - the taxpayers would get paid back. The time for pragmatism is now, but Senate Republicans don't recognize that.
Senate Republicans have yet to realize that the GOP lost so many seats in 2006 and 2008 because the American public has a greater desire for pragmatism than ideology.
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OTB Latenight - The Bangles
37 minutes ago
1 comments:
You say that the GOP didn’t vote for the bailout because of their hostility to unions. I say that the only reason that Democrats are giving a hoot is because of the unions. Unions and their workers are a huge part of the Dems coalition, so the bailout is payback for all the good work that they have done in helping them regain their majorities.
Senate Republicans have yet to realize that the GOP lost so many seats in 2006 and 2008 because the American public has a greater desire for pragmatism than ideology.
I think that I read a poll that said that either over or close to 60% of Americans are against a bailout of the automotive industry. So if that’s true, they the GOP is on the side of the majority of the US.
Now maybe if those starbucks employees were members of a union, then they too would have gotten a bailout.
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