The beautiful hypocrisy of "don't use taxpayer dollars to save Detroit"
Richard Sessions, R-Alabama, has been all too happy to tell us how there's a vibrant auto industry in his home state, supposedly because it's foreign-owned factories that are not unionized, and therefore we shouldn't spend taxpayer dollars to support the flailing auto industry in Detroit.
There's a problem with that statement. Alabama gave Mercedes-Benz $253 million in incentives to build their factory there. Honda? Another $158 million for a factory. Hyundai? Pony up another $234 million.
Robert Corker, R-Tennessee, who's been sounding a similar note? Made his political career in part by putting together a state package of over half a billion dollars to get a Volkwagen plant brought to his home city of Chattanooga. They got the factory because Alabama was only willing to offer $385 million.
The list goes on, of southern states all too happy to throw together hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of incentives to lure foreign automakers to their states. Yet many of the (Republican) representatives of these states are the same guys sounding the tune about how we shouldn't use taxpayer dollars to save Detroit.
Why not? Simple. They're union workers up there, and they vote Democrat. There's no conservative principle of free market economics here, it's simply that they would rather not have the money going to the other side's voters, they'd rather have it sent to their own. And if the standoff results in Detroit's collapse, nobody's going to care about whether partisan political stalemates caused it, because they'll all just point the fingers at each other anyway.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen has asked the government of Germany for a share of the bailout cash that's being doled out on the banks there (much as GM and Chrysler are asking here), and Sweden has already ponied up $10 billion (with a B) to keep Volvo and Saab afloat. So... yeah, the whole claim that none of the other automakers in foreign countries are asking for government help because they don't suck? Bunk.
So here's the big question: do we like having automakers based and run and owned in America? They're not asking for anything their competitors aren't asking from their own governments. Do we want to let them crash and burn on principle, or is saving what ultimately looks like a good tenth of the jobs in the country that ultimately depend on the auto industry still looking like a good idea to anybody else out there?
There's a problem with that statement. Alabama gave Mercedes-Benz $253 million in incentives to build their factory there. Honda? Another $158 million for a factory. Hyundai? Pony up another $234 million.
Robert Corker, R-Tennessee, who's been sounding a similar note? Made his political career in part by putting together a state package of over half a billion dollars to get a Volkwagen plant brought to his home city of Chattanooga. They got the factory because Alabama was only willing to offer $385 million.
The list goes on, of southern states all too happy to throw together hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of incentives to lure foreign automakers to their states. Yet many of the (Republican) representatives of these states are the same guys sounding the tune about how we shouldn't use taxpayer dollars to save Detroit.
Why not? Simple. They're union workers up there, and they vote Democrat. There's no conservative principle of free market economics here, it's simply that they would rather not have the money going to the other side's voters, they'd rather have it sent to their own. And if the standoff results in Detroit's collapse, nobody's going to care about whether partisan political stalemates caused it, because they'll all just point the fingers at each other anyway.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen has asked the government of Germany for a share of the bailout cash that's being doled out on the banks there (much as GM and Chrysler are asking here), and Sweden has already ponied up $10 billion (with a B) to keep Volvo and Saab afloat. So... yeah, the whole claim that none of the other automakers in foreign countries are asking for government help because they don't suck? Bunk.
So here's the big question: do we like having automakers based and run and owned in America? They're not asking for anything their competitors aren't asking from their own governments. Do we want to let them crash and burn on principle, or is saving what ultimately looks like a good tenth of the jobs in the country that ultimately depend on the auto industry still looking like a good idea to anybody else out there?