The economy is booming, car sales continue to grow year after year, and yet, as the Washington Post reports, America’s automakers are looking to the American taxpayers to help them deal with problems of their own making.
Troubled U.S. automakers and their allies on Capitol Hill are seeking billions of dollars in aid from the federal government ranging from health coverage for their workers to extra tax write-offs for themselves.
In addition to your money, they have one simple request:
They’re also asking for one rhetorical favor: Please don’t call the requests a bailout.
“I don’t view it as a bailout,” Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said.
“We’re not looking for a bailout,” agreed William C. Ford Jr., chairman of Ford Motor Co.
Ayn Rand once said “A is A” and, in this case, a bailout is a bailout. Call it “investing in America’s future.” Call it “preserving our industrial base.” What it really is, though, is corporate welfare given to corporations who are eitehr too inefficient or too lazy to do what needs to be done to stay competative in today’s world.
The last, and biggest, corporate bailout of course, was the Chrysler bailout in 1983. At the time, it was justified as a way of keeping American competative with foreign automakers. Now, of course, Chrysler is owner by a German company. So much for that theory.
Unlike, Chrysler, though, Ford, GM, and their bought-and-paid-for allies in Congress, are hoping that we won’t notice they’re asking for a bailout by breaking their request down into smaller pieces.
In a speech in Washington last month, William Ford urged the government to help domestic automakers by expanding subsidies for companies that make components for gasoline-fuel-cell hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles. He also asked for federal money to retrain workers and for tax breaks to help manufacturers outfit old plants with new equipment.
In other words, Ford wants you and I to subsidize the costs they incur in bringing new technology to market and otherwise reduce the cost of doing business.
And, General Motors has a shopping list just a large:
GM has its own elaborate list. It hopes that pension legislation that is wending its way through Congress will tread lightly on heavy manufacturers such as GM. The legislation would strengthen the federal backstop to private pension plans by raising corporate contributions to a fund. The company also seeks health legislation down the road that would unburden it of the huge cost of medical coverage that it now offers its 450,000 retirees and their spouses.
The question of why you and I should be helping GM break its admittedly badly negotiated contractual obligations to its employees remains unanswered, of course.
And that’s not all:
In addition, the companies advocate tougher trade policies that would restrict the import of foreign cars into the United States where possible and would ease entry of U.S.-made cars into other countries. “We could sell plenty [of cars] in Japan if we were allowed to,” Sen. Levin said. “We need a president to go after the Japanese to tell them if they don’t reduce their barriers that they will find similar barriers to theirs” in the United States.
In other words, General Motors and Ford are in favor of restricting the choices available to American consumers and forcing them to pay more for a particulare vehicle merely because it happens to be manufactured in a foreign country. Protectionism such as this does nothing to address the long-term structural reasons that American automakers are lagging behind companies like Honda and Toyota, though, and only serves to punish the consumer.
Its time for Washington to reform corporate welfare in the same way that it once reformed welfare for the poor. If GM, Ford, or any other company can’t make it on their own, then let the market deal with them. Keeping them alive with taxpayer dollars does not help the economy and only helps to line the pockets of the plutocrats who run these companes while claiming to believe in capitalism and freedom.
