Auto Industry Bail Out – What To Do, What To Do

By now, we all know the fate of the $14 B auto industry bailout bill. It was killed in the Senate last Friday. I admit it. I am torn by cognitive dissonance. I don’t know which side of this issue I am – or should be.

Reasons For The Bailout

• The financial industry, which is ultimately responsible for this global meltdown, received a bail out with no strings attached. We (our Republican President and administration) could not wait to rush to the aid of all those billionaires who run banks, and whose wealth came from (and despite of) their ill decisions that brought us this recession. 
• The auto industry is precariously intertwined with many other ancillary industries, factories, and businesses. The livelihood of countless families is at stake, many of whom are mere innocent pawns. Conservatives should be best equipped to comprehend this situation. If you believe in trickle-down economics with respect to wealth-building and benefiting the broad population, you should also agree that the opposite effect could be just as authentic. Auto industry’s collapse could negatively and inadvertently trickle down and hurt the broader population. 
• How do you justify withdrawing promised benefits to those whose sweat went into building cars for decades? Were the benefits they were promised illogical and unsustainable? Perhaps. But blame negotiators on both sides, not actual workers.
• As compared to the financial sector which is built on a complicated house of cards involving speculation of non-tangible papers and securities, the auto industry at least has a real, physical and touchable product. Is it a product that is not as good as it could be? Yes! Does it have trouble competing in a global market? Certainly! But that’s besides the point.
• Remember when we bailed out Chrysler a couple of decades ago? They paid the taxpayer’s loan back early and in full. It can be done, and there’s precedence for it.

Reasons Against The Bailout

• Free market economy functions spectacularly when outdated ideas and industries are quickly phased out. Most Democrats should understand this part well. If you consider yourself an environmentalist or if you believe in evolution, you are fully aware that Mother Nature executes the plan of natural selection with brutal efficiency. Emulating that which has been perfected for over 4 billion years (sorry my religious friends, it’s true!) should be beneficial in the long run.
• Even if you don’t believe in evolution, bailing out the auto industry should make you cringe. How long, and at what price, should the Pony Express or Telegraph companies have remained in business? Should they have received a  bailout?
• President Bush and Vice President Cheney are in favor of it! Seriously. It’s been reported that Cheney has advised GOP Senators that it’ll be “Herbert Hoover” time if aid to the industry is rejected. That tells me something profound. It convinces me that this is a futile attempt at saving his administration’s legacy and, as such, I am not able to support it. 
• The auto industry itself has resisted ideas and legislation for years. They have stopped at nothing to align themselves with oil companies. Let the oil companies use their record profits of the past two years to bail out auto companies.

What to do , what to do, . . .