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Originally Posted by BowtieGuy
My post had nothing to do with party politics. The fact of the matter is that he is simply another politician who must pander as much as possible. He is no better informed than 80% of politicians about any particular topic, ESPECIALLY the automotive world. Why should we care what any politician has to say about this, unless they are supporters.
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Mitt actually is better informed than about 99% of the politicians regarding all things economic including the Big 3. As he points out, he grew up in the middle of it.
Dragoneye has a good point about some corrections being made in 2010. Chrysler has a short term funding hurdle in the amount of over 10 billion. I'm not sure what every manufacturer's VEBA funding hurdle is. So my question then becomes: is this actually a bailout of the retired employee health care plan?
I just researched this and the basic jist of it is the UAW will start to pay their own in 2010, but they can't pay their own without a huge injection to set the fund up.
If this is the case, it makes more sense to me. You could then say: "The Big 3 and the UAW have taken a gigantic step toward making Detroit competitive again. The UAW has agreed to self-fund their retirement starting in 2010, However we (the Big 3) have to step up to fund this for 2009. If we can get help to get us through 2009 we will be in a much better position cost-wise to compete."
^^^This sounds MUCH more reasonable to me as a taxpayer than "we need money to keep going"- which is really all we hear. I simply won't accept that I need to throw money at a problem unless I know it's really going to make a difference. The UAW needs to educate the American people on their plan if they want the American people to assist them. I don't speak for America, but I know a lot of people who basically feel like I do. We don't want the Big 3 to fail. We don't particularly feel like making a donation. However give me a business plan on why things will be different and we'll talk.