Lame Duck Session Takes Flight
Monday November 17, 2008
The U.S. Congress begins a lame duck session today, with slim hopes of creating and passing another economic stimulus bill before the end of the year. High on the lawmakers’ stimulating agenda should be a proposed $25 billion bailout plan for suffering U.S. automakers, GM, Ford and Chrysler.
After President-elect Obama resigned his Senate seat on Sunday, Democrats hold a slim 50-49 edge in upper house and will need the votes of at least 10 Republicans to move an automaker bailout bill forward.
Comments
To those who oppose to Auto Industry Bail out;
In a perfect world of Capitalism only the strong survive and business takes care of
itself. But those are not the ground rules we have been playing under. The government
has controlled and mismanaged the credit markets with the introduction of the
Community Reinvestment Act and followed it up with deregulating and miss managing
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the point that our credit system almost collapsed.
Add to that the deregulation of the futures market that allowed oil to hit $147.00 per
barrel and started a consumer driver recession. It is the governments fault,
they caused the problem and they should stand good to fix it. Gm has been in a restructure program for the last several years that should reach a majority of it’s
goals by 2010. I’m talking about moving the legacy cost of the retirees to the UAW,
which with other cuts and changes would drastically improve Gm’s underlying cost
per vehicle. Some say that GM built gas guzzler SUV’s and trucks that the public
didn’t want, but that was untrue, an out right lie. They were built due to demand
for such vehicles, look at your local Toyota lot and see the number of full size V-8
trucks and SUV’s. Toyota saw the demand and was trying to tap into that large market.
It was $4.00 a gallon gas that killed it in less than a month and no company can change
production over in less than 6 months and retool especially with the availability of loans
gone. Another government screw up. We pay more to other countries in the form of
aid to help with our security. Those opposed to helping out our manufacturing base
survive the screw ups of the government should ask themselves who will build the tanks
and planes the next time we need them. It makes me sick to my stomach to see supposedly grown men and women play these political games and argue over the fate
of millions of workers future when they caused the problem to begin with. It’s time
for our elected officials to get off their he said she said politically driven backsides, accept the responsibility that they know is their’s and fix this short term problem. For
the rest of you generating an income off of the volatile market ups and downs and enjoy
profiting from a company crashing, get a real job and contribute to society and quit being
the vultures you have become.
Mitch Mayberry