Today, the CEOs of our Big Three auto makers met with President Bush to discuss the problems domestic auto manufacturers are facing in the global marketplace.
President Bush has mentioned before that there is not much he can do to help them. They have to learn to compete and quit crying on Washington's shoulder.
The President has a point. The auto companies created their own mess by letting the unions get away with murder - now they are paying for their stupidity and short-sightedness but I must admit that they did not have much of a choice when the unions threatened to strike only one of the companies not all three.
It would be nice if the government could take over the cost of providing health care to all their workers but that is just silly thinking. They kept giving more and more health benefits, even overlapping Medicare, and now they have to sober up and realize they can no longer afford such largess.
The auto companies do have a point about the global market playing field; it is NOT level. We still cannot sell cars into Japan. China and Japan control their currencies making our products more expensive to buy over there but their products cheap to buy here. In this one area we should insist on fairness and back up the request with some threats of reciprocity in kind.
I know the Democrats are going to be in charge soon but they cannot bail-out the auto companies with protectionist policies; they need to allow the global market to operate freely.
The Republicans have been slapped silly and put in their place. Now I have to start worrying about the damage Democrats can do - the pendulum swings again - is there a happy medium?
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