To: i-node who wrote (615262 ) 6/7/2011 6:53:14 PM From: tejek Respond to Fact Checking the Fact Checker In the year before the President took office, the American auto industry lost more than 400,000 jobs. Chrysler and GM were facing liquidation. Independent forecasts projected that, were the companies to fail, it could have eliminated more than 1 million jobs. Instead he chose a different way: standing behind the American auto industry, but requiring the companies to undergo painful restructuring to become competitive for the future. But let’s be clear: had President Obama not taken action, Chrysler would have liquidated and that money would have been gone. Instead of losing all $4 billion of those dollars, we have recovered more than 70% of them for taxpayers, in addition to all of the funds committed by President Obama. it is not only factually accurate for President Obama to note the full recovery – and then some – of the funds he decided to commit to Chrysler, but it is an accurate description of the circumstance he faced and the decisions he made with respect to the company. For the record, the UAW, which is in fact a private entity, does not own Chrysler stock. The Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) which owns the stock is an independent trust, not controlled by the UAW, but by independent fiduciaries. The UAW has minority representation on the Trust governing body. That view is backed up by even conservative estimates, which suggest that more than a million American jobs would have been lost had the President failed to act. It’s also why Ford CEO Alan Mulally said that even though his company did not take government funds, “if GM and Chrysler would have gone into freefall bankruptcy, they would have taken the supply base down and taken the industry down plus maybe turned the U.S. recession into a depression.”Mr. Mulally’s quote also debunks the Post’s assertion that critics of rescuing the industry had a plan other than to do nothing. In late 2008 and early 2009 there was no private capital being volunteered to save the industry. That’s why Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne recently said that anyone who claims the company could have survived without government assistance is “smoking illegal material.” Without the President’s decision to step in, GM and Chrysler would have gone into liquidation, taking the American auto industry with them. Some may continue to believe that this was a better course for our economy, but they should defend that position, not try to rewrite the historical record.Finally, the Post downplays the fact that GM is in the process of rehiring of thousands of workers who were laid off as part of the restructuring. The President will be the first one to tell you that we will not rest until every American who is looking for a job can find one. But we will also not apologize for touting the rehiring of nearly 10,000 American manufacturing workers and the fact that soon no GM employees will be laid-off as good news. whitehouse.gov
