History is Happening Now

UPDATE: Congratulations United Auto Workers’ union! Well Done! Great work shooting yourselves in the foot! Your behavior — and the behavior of the Democrats who are apparently in your pocket – is political strategy at its self-destructive best!

Check out this excerpt from a Politico article, which describes a Republican plan to blame the UAW for Congress’ failure to pass a rescue plan for the American auto industry:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who played a central role in the negotiations that fell apart Thursday, put parts of the plan into play Friday.

In an interview with Politico, Corker said that the bailout plan lost any hope of Republican support in the Senate when the UAW refused to agree to a “date certain” on which the secretary of labor would begin the process of certifying that the wages paid by domestic automakers were “competitive” with those paid by foreign manufacturers with U.S. plants.

And in a press conference, Corker said a Republican alternative to the White House-backed plan could have passed both the House and the Senate if the UAW had “released” Democrats to vote for it.

“I hate to be so blunt,” Corker said. “That’s politics.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed Corker’s suggestion that the UAW’s position on the wages issue was the “sticking point,” and he washed his hands of responsibility for the Big Three’s larger problems.

“None of us want to see them go down,” he said in a statement, “but very few of us had anything to do with the dilemma that they’ve created for themselves.”

This argument may be valid or not, but either way, I predict Republicans will use this argument to great effect. The Republicans will argue that they wanted to save the American auto industry, they wanted to save the auto workers’ jobs – and all they wanted in return was for those workers to accept pay and benefit packages equal to what other American auto workers get. But the auto workers turned down the deal because they just can’t bear the thought of making the same amount that other auto workers make.

So congratulations UAW — you’ve done an awesome job casting yourselves as greedy power brokers using your special influence with the Democratic party to try to force American taxpayers to subsidize inflated wages while millions of non-union workers are losing their jobs. Instead of forcing the Republicans to publicly admit that they refuse to bailout the auto industry, you’re letting them argue it’s actually YOU who don’t want to be bailed out at a reasonable price.

Ugh. Even Dick Cheney (of all people!) tried to help the cause recently:

Administration officials have been warning for weeks that failure to pass the bill could lead to an even deeper recession.

That was the message Vice President Dick Cheney brought to a closed-door Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, reportedly warning that it’ll be “Herbert Hoover” time if aid to the industry was rejected, according to a senator familiar with the remarks. A Cheney spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the vice president’s remarks.

Thanks to Cheney for trying to make the point that it’s the Senate Republicans, rather than the UAW, who should be forced to take responsibility for killing an auto bailout. But by refusing to accept the last deal that was on the table, the UAW workers have given the Republicans a great strategy to deflect this line of criticism from Cheney and others.

Ugh.

……….

Why is it that so many newspaper articles begin one way and end in a completely different way?

Here’s an example: Compare the beginning and the end of the following article, dated December 12, entitled “White House Ready to Aid Auto Industry.”

First, here’s how the article begins:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said on Friday that it was prepared to intervene to prevent the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler after Republican senators blocked a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers.

The decision came after a tense standoff this week in which senior White House officials pleaded with Senate Republicans not to block the measure, including a warning by Vice President Dick Cheney that they would be remembered for decades as the party of Herbert Hoover if the industry collapsed.

This opening is quite clear in indicating that it was Senate Republicans who made it impossible for Congress to pass legislation bailing out the American auto industry. The article clearly suggests that Democrats were willing to pass an auto bailout, but Republicans refused to go along, and so the legislation died.

Compare that with the end of the article:

There was little appetite among Senate Republicans for another multibillion-dollar corporate bailout and less so for the American automakers who were widely perceived as victims of their own bad business decisions over decades. But Senator Bob Corker, the junior Republican from Tennessee, offered to pursue a potential compromise.

Mr. Corker quickly provided Democrats with the text of a five page amendment to the auto rescue bill, which would require much steeper concessions by the companies and the U.A.W.

As the senators met in the ceremonial conference room of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the first floor of the Capitol, lobbyists and other representatives of G.M. and the Ford Motor Company gathered nearby. Eventually, they were also joined by Stephen A. Feinberg, the reclusive founder of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns Chrysler.

Negotiators on both sides said they were able to agree on Mr. Corker’s proposal to require a huge slashing of debt obligations by the automakers, including an agreement for the union to accept an equity stake in place of payments that it was owed to employee benefits accounts.

But Mr. Corker said Republican senators were also insisting on steep cuts in wages and benefits that would bring the American automakers in line with United States-based employees of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. And he said that the Republicans wanted a firm deadline, sometime in 2009, for the automakers to carry out those cuts.

It was over that point that the talks deadlocked, with the union pushing for those cuts to take place after its current contract expires in 2011.

Alan Reuther, the chief lobbyist for the union, said labor leaders back in Detroit were astonished at what Mr. Corker was attempting to accomplish — a virtual rewriting of the U.A.W. contract, which typically takes the better part of a year to negotiate. “That’s one thing that our folks in Detroit were just amazed at,” Mr. Reuther said. “Does Senator Corker really think he can do a restructuring of the industry in six hours?”

When the U.A.W. would not agree to a 2009 deadline, it was clear that no deal could be struck. “It seems that the U.A.W. blew it up,” said Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana.

The ending is quite clear in indicating that Corker was trying to get a bailout bill passed, but the United Auto Workers refused to accept Corker’s proposal.

So the beginning of the article tells a story that Democrats were pushing to pass a bailout but Republicans refused to accept it. The end of the article tells a story that some Republicans were pushing to pass a bailout but the UAW refused to accept it.

The New York Times clearly believes the former story is more accurate than the latter, which is why the former story is at the beginning and the latter story is buried at the end. But why is the former story more accurate than the latter story?

I realize part of my confusion about this has to do with my ideas about the need for an auto bailout, and my misunderstanding about what has been going on in Washington over the past few weeks. I’m ready to spend hundreds of billions of dollars investing in education, health care, infrastructure, energy innovation and more, in order to make this country a better place for all Americans — and especially for people who lose their jobs but still want to provide for their families. But I also believe in fairness, which means I hate the idea of spending billions of dollars saving one set of companies and one set of workers while thousands of other companies go bankrupt and millions of other workers lose their jobs. Nevertheless, I was willing to hold my nose and support the auto bailout bill in Congress (stongly, in fact) because I thought it was absolutely critical for our economy that the bailout bill pass.

Last week, I was scared of what would happen if the bailout bill failed. I was scared that if the auto bailout bill failed, it would create a downward spiral of economic catastrophe, creating more pain for everyone impacted by an already ailing U.S. economy.

So I furious with Senate Republicans for speaking out against the proposed auto bailout, but I was also rooting for Corker when he put forward his proposed compromise. It looks like my fears of disaster are being realized, I thought, but maybe, just maybe, Corker can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Because I figured that if Corker could push through a bailout — any bailout — it would be better than no bailout at all.

So when I found out that the United Auto Workers refused to accept the Corker Amendment, I was furious again. (To be clear, I was furious at the UAW for opposing Corker’s proposal, but I had no idea at the time that the union was actually responsible for killing Corker’s initiative. I figured at the time that Corker’s efforts ultimately failed to win the support of Senate Republicans who were opposed to a bailout in any form. Nevertheless, I was floored by the idea that the UAW would even come close to blocking a plan to spend $14 billion saving their jobs which would otherwise evaporate, leaving them jobless.) Why would the UAW workers cut off their noses to spite their faces? I thought. Why would they say no to $14 billion in taxpayer assistance, even if it meant losing their jobs? If the UAW workers don’t want to accept these proposed pay cuts and benefit cuts, that’s fine, I thought, but can’t they just formally accept the deal and then quit their jobs, allowing new workers to benefit from the taxpayer dollars? Why must they wreck the U.S. economy while they’re also wrecking their own livelihoods?

But here’s where I was wrong. It wasn’t actually crucial or critical or important or necessary for the auto bailout to pass. Passing the bailout wasn’t needed to save the auto workers’ jobs or to prevent a downward spiral of economic mayhem. Because as soon as the bailout bill died, the Bush Administration essentially proved that the bill had never mattered in the first place. From the same article:

After refusing for weeks to tap the $700 billion financial rescue fund, the administration suggested it would dip into the fund to at least permit the companies to continue their operations until the new Congress and new administration arrive next month.

“Because Congress failed to act, we will stand ready to prevent an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry,” said Brookly McLaughlin, a Treasury spokeswoman.

So, as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary for Congress to pass an auto bailout bill — since the Bush Administration would see to it anyway that the American auto industry was bailed out. And since it wasn’t necessary to pass a bailout bill, it certainly wasn’t necessary for the UAW to accept Corker’s amendment.

So I can’t be angry at the UAW — they only realized what I failed to realize: that neither self-interest nor patriotism should have motivated them to accept any deal that was put before them, no matter how unpalatable.

In other words, I didn’t realize that UAW president Ron Gettelfinger was LYING when he said this in a press release before the Senate voted on the bill:

“The Senate must now act on this critical legislation, which President Bush helped to draft and will sign. It’s clear there is majority support in Congress for these emergency bridge loans, which will protect millions of jobs, thousands of businesses, and hundreds of billions in tax revenues at all levels of government.

“We can’t let a minority in the Senate obstruct an urgent response to an economic crisis which threatens the long-term viability of our U.S. manufacturing base — not when millions of jobs are at risk in all 50 states.”

In fact, the UAW knew full well that nothing was at risk — not the long-term viability of our manufacturing base, not millions of jobs in all 50 states. The bill was never “critical,” because if it were indeed critical and necessary, the UAW would have been willing to accept Corker’s proposal.

And the Senate Republicans who voted against the bill were also smart to vote against it — knowing, perhaps, that their vote in favor of this unpopular legislation wouldn’t be necessary to save the auto industry.

Since the bill’s passage wasn’t actually that important, the New York Times’ editors have the luxury of dismissing the Corker Amendment as unreasonable, illegitimate and irrelevant to the larger issue of who killed “the bailout.” It was Senate Republicans who killed the reasonable, legitimate bailout that was supported by the White House, Democrats in the Senate, the U.S. Congress, and the UAW — and opposed by Senate Republicans and a majority of the American people. Meanwhile, it was the UAW and (apparently) Senate Dems who killed the illegitimate, unreasonable Corker Amendment. Fair enough.

I’m glad the auto industry will be ok, but I also worry that Democrats, the Bush White House, the auto company executives, and the UAW have all been crying wolf — telling us something big and bad will happen if Congress doesn’t pass a bill, then making sure that big, bad thing doesn’t happen when the bill failed.

The next time somebody tries to scare me about what will happen if Congress doesn’t support a “rescue” bill, I’ll be more skeptical.