Very insightful article that shows...
- How a big GOP player and Romney backer says Romney has consistently messed up on the bailout issue
- That the bailout was pretty much the only way to save GM and Chrystler...which even competitor Ford said could have been pivotal in saving the US economy
Republican Harry Wilson Says Romney's Auto Bailout Claim Is ‘Simply Not True’
The Nation
If there’s one man in America who can credibly destroy Mitt Romney’s last-minute transmutation on the auto bailout, it’s Harry Wilson. Wilson is not only backing Romney for president, he is the finance chair for Republican Matt Doheny in one of the state’s hottest congressional races. Wilson was recruited to run for the US Senate this year by party leaders and is poised to run for comptroller again in 2014. In addition to being one of New York’s top Republicans, Wilson was senior adviser to President Obama’s Task Force on the Auto Industry.
Wilson appeared on October 23 on Bloomberg News’s In the Loop and was asked by host Betty Liu about Romney.
“I’m, as you know, a Republican who supports the governor. But I think on this issue, I think he’s really mishandled it,” said Wilson.
A startled Liu: “Romney has mishandled it?”
“Yes,” continued Wilson. “He came out both in 2008 and earlier in 2012, in a piece in one of the Detroit newspapers, and said he wouldn’t have supported any government capital because private capital was available. That’s simply not true. The president said that last night.”
Liu interjected that the unavailability of private money was backed up by a Congressional Budget Office report.
“Absolutely,” added Wilson. “We tried everything we could to find private money. I personally would have dramatically preferred private money. It just wasn’t available because of the crisis we were in. And the greatest thing about this point is that it is the easiest thing in the world to prove or disprove. All you need is one person to come forward and say, ‘Oh, I would have provided private capital, and here’s an example of where I said that in 2009.’ And no one has said that in three years, cause it’s just not true.”
The Detroit News endorsed Romney recently—an endorsement cited in Romney’s ad—but still branded his bailout philosophy “wrongheadedness,” and made the same point Wilson did: “Romney suggested government-backed loans to keep the companies afloat post bankruptcy. What GM and Chrysler needed were bridge loans to get them through the process, and the private markets were unwilling to provide them.”
Alan Mulally, the Ford CEO who testified on behalf of the bailout of his competitors in 2008 while not seeking any taxpayer money himself, says now that “nobody was going to lend” GM and Chrysler any money, even in a debtor-in-possession bankruptcy. If the two companies had gone “into freefall,” Mulally contended, “they could have taken the entire supply base into free fall also,” precisely the Ohio auto job base. Mulally says that “could’ve taken the United States from a recession to a depression."
http://www.thenation.com/article/17...ys-romney-auto-bailout-claim-simply-not-true#