Let's be clear: the Big Three have no chance of being viable companies if they pay above-market wages, and Senate Republicans were insisting that auto workers receive market, but not above-market, wages. In addition, the Senate plan would have required the auto makers' creditors to take a 2/3 loss, further enhancing their viability.
The UAW clearly has a veto over the Democratic party, since Senate Democrats could have accepted the Republican bill over UAW objections. But why should they if President Bush will cave and bailout Detroit anyway? And note that the President couldn't even let a few days pass, to see if the UAW or Democrats could propose another solution.
My take is that this represents the latest manifestation of Bush's governing philosophy, compassionate conservatism. Unfortunately, this approach has turned into a wholesale abandonment of free-market principles that Bush claims he advocates and that has been one of the defining characteristics of the Republican party since Ronald Reagan.
Under Bush, the government has created a massive new entitlement program that adds trillions of dollars in liabilities (the Medicare drug benefit); partnered with noted conservative Ted Kennedy to pass a huge expansion of the federal government's role in education (No Child Left Behind); presided over an explosion of non-defense/homeland security spending (originally thought to buy Congressional support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but perhaps that is being too generous to the President); and implemented TARP to rescue the financial system.
And now Bush is promoting an auto bailout in opposition to Republicans in Congress.
It is a sordid record that has vastly expanded the scope of the government's powers and intrusion into the lives of every American.
These efforts are the genuine threat to our liberties, and not the alleged problems in the fight against terrorism.
huge mistake by Bush --- why does he continue to leave his mark in history as such a terrible one?
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