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Columbus
Dispatch…
Over-inflated-Obama
campaign isn’t painting true
picture of auto bailout in Ohio
Sunday September 9, 2012 6:39 AM
(This
is an absolute must-read, but
sure to go to the Columbus Dispatch to get the full impact of the
editorial –
CNO editor).
President
Barack
Obama and his supporters have made the $82 billion bail-out of General
Motors
and Chrysler a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
But
there are a few things wrong
with the picture they paint.
First,
the number of jobs they
claim to have saved in Ohio is inflated. They cite 850,000 Ohio
auto-industry
jobs protected by the bailout; these numbers include everything from
car
dealerships to auto-parts retailers to workers for companies such as
Honda and
Ford, which were not bailed out.
While
it’s true that other car
makers supported the bailout in order to maintain the supply chain,
Obama can’t
claim credit for saving every auto-manufacturing job in Ohio.
Nor
can the administration honestly
include hundreds of thousands of non-manufacturing jobs in its tally.
As Connie
Wehrkamp, a spokeswoman for Gov. John Kasich, said in June: “Including
new and
used retail sales and retail auto-parts sales...distorts the data.
Growth in
used-car sales and retail auto-parts sales isn’t chained to growth in
new auto
assembly and is often counter-cyclical to it. No one would
realistically
believe that the auto bailout was intended to help out a NAPA store,
but that’s
the argument that some would have you believe.”
As
for dealership jobs, just ask
U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci how that worked out. Renacci, a Republican from
Wadsworth, owned Wadsworth Chevrolet until it was closed in 2010 as
part of the
government-overseen restructuring of GM. Renacci is now running a TV ad
saying
that under Obama, “ big government is running the economy” and harming
Ohio
businesses and workers. Many have questioned the aggressive dealership
closures
demanded by the government…
Read
the rest of the article at the
Columbus Dispatch
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