Three cheers for taking credit where credit is due. This is from a speech given today in Toledo to Chrysler workers (email, no link). Bodes well for 2012, IMHO.
What would be life like here in Toledo if you didn’t make these cars?
Now, two years ago, we came pretty close to finding out. We were still near the bottom of a vicious recession — the worst that we’ve seen in our lifetimes — and ultimately, that recession cost 8 million jobs. And it hit this industry particularly hard. So in the year before I took office, this industry lost more than 400,000 jobs. In the span of a few months, one in five American autoworkers got a pink slip. And two great American companies, Chrysler and GM, stood on the brink of liquidation.
Now, we had a few options. We could have followed the status quo and kept the automakers on life support by just giving them tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, but never really dealing with the structural issues at these plants. But that would have just kicked the problem down the road.
Or we could have done what a lot of folks in Washington thought we should do, and that is nothing. We could have just let U.S. automakers go into an uncontrolled freefall. And that would have triggered a cascade of damage all across the country. If we let Chrysler and GM fail, plants like this would have shut down, then dealers and suppliers across the country would have shriveled up, then Ford and other automakers could have failed, too, because they wouldn’t have had the suppliers that they needed. And by the time the dominos stopped falling, more than a million jobs, and countless communities, and a proud industry that helped build America’s middle class for generations wouldn’t have been around anymore….
So we decided to do more than just rescue the industry from crisis. We decided to retool it for a new age. We said that if everyone involved was willing to take the tough steps and make the painful sacrifices that were needed to become competitive, then we’d invest in your future and the future of communities like Toledo; that we’d have your back.
So I placed my bet on you. I put my faith in the American worker. And I’ll tell you what — I’m going to do that every day of the week, because what you’ve done vindicates my faith.
Today, all three American automakers are turning a profit. That hasn’t happened since 2004. Today, all three American automakers are gaining market share. That hasn’t happened since 1995. And today, I’m proud to announce the government has been completely repaid for the investments we made under my watch by Chrysler because of the outstanding work that you guys did. (Applause.) Because of you. (Applause.)
Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes the American taxpayer from the investment we made during my watch. And by the way, you guys repaid it six years ahead of schedule. (Applause.) And last night, we reached an agreement to sell the government’s remaining interest in the company. So, soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands. Early. Faster than anybody believed. (Applause.)
Many thousands of jobs saved. Chrysler and GM (and Ford, which didn’t require rescue) turning profits, and gaining market share. Chrysler completely back under private ownership barely two years after the crisis. Taxpayers made 100% whole (and possibly more, depending on the loans’ interest rate). I just don’t see a plausible way to spin this as anything other than a huge success.
To the Right the government helping anyone is always bad even when it is a success. Why else would these guys be targeting Medicare and Social Security two of the most successful and popular government programs in history? The President sounded great today and this should be made into an ad. Get every major Republican on record who admitted they would rather see one million jobs lost than a single one saved by government intervention. Jobs lost in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kentucky let alone thousands of dealers in communities across the country. Auto dealers are normally Republican, ask any of them in the Midwest, like I did in the conservative small farming town of Sandwich, IL where my girlfriend bought her Buick, and he will tell you “the tea party types make me sick, and many of them are my friends but Obama’s no socialist he saved my job”. Get Jim Friday and other small businessmen like that to make an ad with that line and contrast it to Romney and T-Paw and Shelby saying the dinosaurs should fail.