Nice try, Lion!
On December 19, 2008, a week after Republicans in the Senate had killed a bailout bill proposed by Democrats, saying it didn’t impose big enough wage cuts on the U.A.W., Bush
unilaterally agreed to lend $17.4 billion of taxpayers’ money to General Motors and Chrysler, of which $13.4 billion was to be extended immediately. He had to twist the law to get the money. Deprived of congressional funding, he diverted cash from the loathed
TARP program, which Congress had already passed, but which was supposed to be restricted to rescuing the banks. “I didn’t want there to twenty-one-per-cent unemployment,” he said to a meeting of the National Automobile Dealers Association in Las Vegas last month,
explaining why he acted as he did. “I didn’t want history to look back and say, ‘Bush could have done something but chose not to do it.’ ”
I can't help it if you choose to skip posts that prove you wrong...nice try indeed.
Let me repeat from page 128 of this thread.
Yes Bush working with the Obama transition team approved the bailout, then when Obama awarded the money he
stipulated certain things like firing the CEO & the now discontinued Chevy Volt...
Obama took over GM and saved the UAW. Which was a large part of GM's problem and a huge contributor to the Obama campaign.
from
US News & World Report:
For Obama, the bailout of GM was an opportunity to suggest that government intervention in the private economy, if it's done right, can be a good thing and to present himself as a chief executive who cared, in contrast to the messaging flowing out of his campaign about his GOP opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
But it turns out the American people may have been sold a bill of goods, that the so-called bailout of Chrysler and GM was more about saving the once all-powerful United Auto Workers' union than it was about bringing the companies back to profitability. It's a story that ranges from the slime to the ridiculous that should, as several recent news accounts suggest, be looked at more closely.
One is a story that ran in the October 14 edition of
USA Today that said GM had "boosted prices of its redesigned 2014 full-size pickups $1,500 – enough to pay for a $1,500 rebate currently offered on most models." The scheme is so bizarre on its face that it sounds like it could only have sprung from the mind of one of the automakers' Washington overlords during the period immediately following the bailout.
from
AP-CNBC
President Obama asserted unprecedented government control over the auto industry Monday, rejecting turnaround plans from
General Motors and
Chrysler and raising the prospect of controlled bankruptcy for either ailing auto giant.
In an extraordinary move, the administration forced the departure of Rick Wagoner as CEO of General Motors over the weekend, and implicit in Obama's remarks was that the government holds the ability to pull the plug on that company or Chrysler.
The Bush administration late last year approved $17 billion in federal funds to help GM and Chrysler survive. It also demanded both companies submit restructuring plans that the Obama administration would review.
Even as he pronounced their effort unsatisfactory, the president said the administration will offer General Motors "adequate working capital" over the next 60 days to produce a reorganization plan acceptable to the administration.
