Key Democratic leaders in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are urging the consideration of adding struggling U.S. automakers to the list of companies eligible for federal bailout assistance.
From the NY Times:
‘‘A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability, the overall health of our economy, and the livelihood of the automobile sector’s work force,’‘ they wrote. ‘‘The economic downturn and the crisis in our financial markets further imperiled our domestic automobile industry and its work force.’‘
This is a very tricky political issue. Most people, on the surface, would probably prefer to aid the automakers, versus the investment banks, as would be a tangible human element to the failure of Ford, or G.M. (factory closings, blue collar jobs lost, etc.). It would truly be a tragedy for any of the big 3 U.S. manufacturers to go belly-up.
But the federal government probably has no business intervening here. The loss of jobs from plant closings would be devastating to the local economies, perhaps even on the state level. But it will not, and should not, be a federal issue. It is not the federal government’s responsibility that U.S. automakers have been unable to figure out how to build a modern, reliable, efficient car that people want to buy in the last 25 years.
However, it appears we might see some policy “tweaks” to act as an aid for the U.S. companies. From the article:
President-elect Obama said Friday his transition team would explore policy options to help the auto industry. Obama’s economic transition team includes two allies of the U.S. auto industry — Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich.
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