from mLive
Opinion: Rick Haglund
The Republican Party has long been known as the party of business.
But we're learning that not all businesses are welcome to the party, including:
• Companies with unionized work forces.
• Corporations that receive more money in federal loans from a Democratic administration than from a Republican presidency.
• General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC.
Those are the only explanations I can offer as to why two of the nation's most prominent Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and party Chairman Michael Steele, recently dumped on the recovery efforts of the two Detroit automakers.
McCain, speaking at a NASCAR race, no less, got all mavericky with reporters last Sunday, saying he was opposed to the federal bailouts of GM and Chrysler (after he was in favor of them), and predicted Chrysler would fail.
And Monday, Steele said GM's third-quarter loss of $1.2 billion is "further proof that President Obama's economic experiments are wrong for America."
Steele failed to mention, though, that Republican President George Bush started the experiment by approving $13.4 billion of the $50 billion loaned to GM.
GM said Monday it's doing well enough to start repaying some of it unused federal loans in December, years ahead of schedule.
The statements by Steele and McCain were, of course, calculated to build political support for their party by those who are opposed to organized labor and government intervention in the economy.
They also were misleading and an affront to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are working to rebuild GM and Chrysler following bankruptcy reorganizations last summer.
McCain said the government had to lend GM and Chrysler $80 billion because the United Auto Workers union wouldn't renegotiate their "very generous contracts" to trim costs.
"It was all about the unions," McCain said, according to the Detroit News.
But the UAW did renegotiate its contracts with GM and Chrysler, taking what amounts to a $7 per hour cut in wages and benefits, and giving up the right to strike until 2015.
The union also agreed to accept large equity stakes in the company instead of cash to fund retiree health care benefits.
Rather than lend money to GM and Chrysler, McCain said the federal government should have let them go bankrupt and reorganize the way most troubled companies do.
Here's the problem: The near collapse of the banking industry in the fall of 2008 dried up the credit markets, making it virtually impossible for GM and Chrysler to find needed bankruptcy financing.
Their only option was to obtain so-called "debtor-in-possession" loans from the federal government. Otherwise, GM and Chrysler likely would have been liquidated.
Auto industry analysts said the liquidation of the two probably would have taken down the entire domestic auto industry, including Ford Motor Co.
Even the plants of nonunion Asian automakers in the South could have been shut for extended periods for lack of parts, some analysts concluded.
Is that the outcome McCain and Steele would have preferred?
But we're learning that not all businesses are welcome to the party, including:
• Companies with unionized work forces.
• Corporations that receive more money in federal loans from a Democratic administration than from a Republican presidency.
• General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC.
McCain, speaking at a NASCAR race, no less, got all mavericky with reporters last Sunday, saying he was opposed to the federal bailouts of GM and Chrysler (after he was in favor of them), and predicted Chrysler would fail.
And Monday, Steele said GM's third-quarter loss of $1.2 billion is "further proof that President Obama's economic experiments are wrong for America."
Steele failed to mention, though, that Republican President George Bush started the experiment by approving $13.4 billion of the $50 billion loaned to GM.
GM said Monday it's doing well enough to start repaying some of it unused federal loans in December, years ahead of schedule.
They also were misleading and an affront to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are working to rebuild GM and Chrysler following bankruptcy reorganizations last summer.
McCain said the government had to lend GM and Chrysler $80 billion because the United Auto Workers union wouldn't renegotiate their "very generous contracts" to trim costs.
"It was all about the unions," McCain said, according to the Detroit News.
But the UAW did renegotiate its contracts with GM and Chrysler, taking what amounts to a $7 per hour cut in wages and benefits, and giving up the right to strike until 2015.
The union also agreed to accept large equity stakes in the company instead of cash to fund retiree health care benefits.
Rather than lend money to GM and Chrysler, McCain said the federal government should have let them go bankrupt and reorganize the way most troubled companies do.
Here's the problem: The near collapse of the banking industry in the fall of 2008 dried up the credit markets, making it virtually impossible for GM and Chrysler to find needed bankruptcy financing.
Their only option was to obtain so-called "debtor-in-possession" loans from the federal government. Otherwise, GM and Chrysler likely would have been liquidated.
Auto industry analysts said the liquidation of the two probably would have taken down the entire domestic auto industry, including Ford Motor Co.
Even the plants of nonunion Asian automakers in the South could have been shut for extended periods for lack of parts, some analysts concluded.
Is that the outcome McCain and Steele would have preferred?
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