"Herbert Hoover Time"

In their last obstruction, "Dr. No" Mitch McConnell's Senate Republicans blocked a bridge loan for the auto companies, unwilling even to sustain them long enough for a new administration to sculpt a responsible response to their crisis.

What was the sticking point? It wasn't getting rid of the CEOs that drove the companies into the ditch. It wasn't forcing the creditors to cut their loans in exchange for stock, giving them a stake in the future. It wasn't accepting an auto czar to enforce the agreement and drive a transition to fuel efficient cars. That was agreed to. No, led by benighted Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- known previously solely for his "call me" race bait campaign ad that helped him win election -- Republicans wanted to break the union, and punish the workers.

They insisted that the UAW agree to cutting workers wages and benefits immediately to match the average hourly compensation paid by non-union foreign auto companies based in the South. This would entail cuts in pay by about 50% within the next months. For Republicans, the problem wasn't the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It wasn't wrong-headed management that was skewered when soaring gas prices wiped out their SUV cash cows. It wasn't the Wall Street dominated trade policies that sacrificed US manufacturing behind a high dollar that made it profitable to move plants and production abroad and aided foreign competitors. It wasn't the burdens of health care costs that make US manufacturers less competitive.

No, for the Republican Senators, the bailout was a chance for a little class warfare. Why should an autoworker make $50-60,000 a year, plus health care? The workers should accept half that and be happy. Autoworkers have agreed to wage givebacks and benefit cuts over the last years. They pledged even deeper cuts in relation to the agreement. But their sacrifices weren't great enough nor the cuts fast enough for Corker and the Republicans.

Now imagine telling a family that lives on $50-60,000 a year that they will make one-half that in six months. They've got mortgages, kids in college or the costs of children, and credit card debts just like the rest of us. Outside of the Wall Street bankers whom the administration has succored without asking them to slash their wages in half, how many Americans could survive a cut of half their paycheck in a few months, without going bankrupt? How many Senators who pay themselves six figure incomes with lavish pensions and health care could manage an immediate 50% reduction in their salaries? (Most of them, come to think of it, since the Senate is a millionaires' club).

Forget about the deepening recession. The Senate Republican position was essentially that the price of bailing out GM and Chrysler was to insure that the union was broken and the workers went bankrupt.

It was, of all people, Vice President Dick Cheney who reportedly warned the Republican caucus that failure to pass the bill would lead to an even worse economic downturn, that it would be "Herbert Hoover time" if the bill didn't pass. And after the Republicans torpedoed the bill, the Asian and European stock markets plummeted, with Wall Street about to follow.

There are defining moments in politics. Here Republicans defined themselves. They are not free market conservatives, for they were willing to do the bailout. They don't object to nationalizing the banks or micromanaging the auto industry on the fly. They are class warriors, willing to risk a worse global economic calamity in order to break a union, to force workers into bankruptcy. Herbert Hoover time. Let's not forget this last ignoble obstruction, committed just as the Senators went home for the holidays.

Comments

[julianne]

ok

[Szewczyk]

If the UAW employees are paid about $29 per hour and the non-union employees of the foreign manufacturers are paid about $25 per hour, then why would the UAW employees have to accept cuts of 50% of their pay? I've even read that at least some Honda employees are paid $30 per hour, while GM employees receive $29.75 per hour. My point is that the hourly pay between the 2 groups isn't that far apart. Somebody isn't telling us everything. In saying that, I'm not at all indicating support for the right-wing Southern Republicans, who seem hell-bent on bring on another Depression and putting a million or more people out of work. Are these right-wing zealots comparing the "total labor costs" of the two groups, under which benefits promised to and owed to retired employees are lumped in with the pay and fringes for current employees? If so, does that make any sense?

[chasingsol]

That's exactly what is happening. It's cherry-picking numbers out of the air so the Republicans can finally try and take down a "sworn enemy". Class warfare indeed.

Herbert Hoover time. With this action, and the associated bad press that is being written about it, the Republican party is rapidly imploding. They are not the party of conservative principles and small government, they are abhorrent and cruel in the extreme. They would give orders of magnitude more money to their buddies in Wall Street with virtually no oversight, but they can't put down some money to save jobs through the end of the year?

It's the holiday season, and they are the Grinch. I am ashamed of them.

[twocrows]

Cut and dried class warfare? Maybe. Heaven knows they're capable of that.

Or, just maybe, it's kick-the-can-time. As in kick this down the road. Let it land at the beginning of Obama's and a strongly Democratic Congress' time in office. Then, in 4 years, blame them for the entire mess.

Given the short memory of the US voter, it just might work.

[PoliticalAnimal]

Where are the perp walks for these bastards?

[plumnelly]

We're in CORKER TIME a relative of HOOVER, same mental insanity in repeating the same policies, Don't see beyond their own republican agenda.................NO REGULATIONS on anything ,otherwise, the republicans wouldn't be able to steal what's left to steal except for the food out of our children's mouths. They also don't want healthcare for children, it's too costyl. I guess their Halliburton buddies wouldn 't be able to keep scammng us for eternity. Our families have paid with blood and money, and now they have the nerve to stand before us to say, you don't deserve to have a chance to save our historical manufacturing industry that could protect us in time of war. Now they're trying to put us in an economic war. The 1% percent who got us into this CORKER/HOOVER financial disaster are insane to think they have any credibility to giving advice after using AMERICAN TAXPAYER MONEY TO SET UP FOREIGN CAR MANUFACTURERS .AND THEN THEY TRY TO DENY OUR AMERICAN CAR MANUFACTURERS A LOAN NOT A BAILOUT AS THEY CALL IT. The subtefruge from the republicans is astounding. With billions every week being poured down a hole in Iraq and wall street. And let's not forget the republican no-bid contractors who have squandered our nation's human and financial wealth. These are people now trying to give us advice on the car loan. There's no way Corker isn't related to Hoover, NOPE, you can't make me believe it.

[jrgilbert]

"More soup, Sir?"

[eilish]

To me, this one act of mercy on the part of Bush & Cheney could go a long way in lifting the complete hatred with which most Americans view them. Perhaps they would want to be known as the Presidency that saved the Big 2, and with that lessening the recession across the world. That would be a fine goodbye. And to hang with the Republican Party, they've killed themselves.

[deke4]

Yes, it really is Howdy Hoover time. The present administration makes the Howdy Doody, and Clarabelle, the Clown, seem like rocket scientist.

[jodieez]

The current GOP is following in the footsteps of one of the most hate-filled presidents of all time Ronald Reagan. One of the first things he did when he came into office was to fire all of the air controllers, even in the face of unsafe air travel.

When are americans going to wake up and realize that the repuglicans are just for one thing busting unions in order to try to defeat dems. They don't care who they hurt, throw out on the street, or turn a once prospers middle class into a below the poverty line class.

How can anyone vote for them when all they do is help out rich folks, and tear down the middle class, you have to be a fool.

[ChristianEcon.com]

Excellent article. This country needs wide re-introduction to the power of organization and unionization to restore balance and efficiency to our economy--we need a return to valuing work and productivity which made this country a superpower--over simply rewarding mere wealth, which is, as is obvious, unsustainable. The very Japanese companies exploiting labor in the south have strong unions back in Japan, and ceo's credit their unions for their success. Unions have been demonized far too successfully and for far too long. Time for that propaganda to end.

[Bladernr1001]

Have you noticed that the most troubled industries in our country also tend to be the most heavily unionized? Auto, Steel, Airlines etc.

Simply raising ones pay does nothing but raise costs to produce something. What unions have done is simply inflationary. It produces no net increase in wealth or buying power. What you probably percieve as a positive outcome in union action (standards of living raised) was actually the result of the increased productivity of the American worker. The output of the American worker is about 4 times higher than it was in the 1950's. A lot of this is due to automation, efficiency and computers. Things the union usually fought against implementing.

What has happened in the auto industry is that decades of above market pay packages for workers has finally caught up to them. The laws of economics correctly predict this equalization despite our continued efforts to thwart it. You cannot repeal the laws of economics.

You mention the existence of strong unions in Japan. But look how their economy has performed the last 15-20 years versus ours. Ours has done much better and Toyota workers here in the states are much better off than their Japanese counterparts.

[TwentyCharactersLong]

Actually, what happened in the auto industry is that the majority of the people they're paying aren't current workers. They're retired workers. If we had a better welfare system the Big Three wouldn't be in trouble.

[BruceHNV]

The most troubled industries tend to have been those with the most abusive management practices. These attract both unionization and eventually economic backlash. These are the heirs to the robber barons of old - the very reason for anti-trust laws, financial oversight laws, and unions.

[idest]

Productivity is calculated in a very simple way. Units (or value) produced divided by hours worked. So productivity can be increased in two ways: either the units produced increases and hours worked remains the same or decreases, or hours worked decreases and units produced remains the same or increases.

So yes, there are less people in a union per-capita, and certainly less manufacturing jobs available to Americans, than there were in the 1950s, so hours worked has decreased. And since we've replaced American workers with either robots or non-American workers, the units produced remains the same. So, yes, technically, our productivity has gone up. But another law of economics states that something costs as much as people are willing to pay for it. Which is why prices haven't come down despite increased "productivity", and why income inequality has risen, because all that extra profit that would have been used to help fund the middle class has gone to line a millionaire's pockets.

What we've seen developing over these desperate months is just the culmination of 30 years of the above.

[brassminnie]

Does anyone else wonder if the idea was make Bush the 'savior' of all those jobs?

[armadillious2002]

I agree with the blogger. Repubs are all about protecting the rich and busting the Unions. That's republicanism 101. They think backwards on virtually every issue and now our once great Nation is failing on every front because of this wrong headed mind set.

[twofish]

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him that if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Mary "Mother" Jones

[billw8017]

I was looking at some figures from financial advisor Walter J. "John Williams'" Shadow Government Statistics. He calculates that if the Consumer Price Index followed its former rules of 1982, it would be much higher, about 13%. Kevin Phillips, Bad Money, agrees except to calculate the rate of inflation much lower, around 8% rather than the official 5.8%. As Williams starts sooner, his rate calculation has more time to compound, so they might be said to be in essential agreement.

The CPI is subtracted from the Gross Domestic Product (inflation reduces its dollar value) and this amounts to a recession level economy running on since 2000. This makes some sense since it was a "jobless recovery." Williams also argues that an honest CPI would have doubled Social Security payments since Social Security is indexed to the CPI. Likewise, wages have not "stagnated" but strongly declined. This explains why people have piled up credit card debt and taken equity from their homes to maintain their lifestyle.

[Fight4Freedom2008]

That is interesting, thank you...

[Jazzcomedian]

The GOP senators misunderstood Cheney. He didn't say. it's Herbert Hoover time, he said "It's Hammer time.' That's why he was singing "Can't Touch This" when he left the chambers. I wish the media would get the story straight.

[pbley68]

Or as Bush would put it, misunderestimated Cheney.