Obama Shows America Just How Screwed They’d Be If Republicans Were In Charge

President Obama used his weekly address to highlight how Republicans were wrong about the auto bailout and show the American people how much progress that the country has made over the last seven years.

Video:

The President said:

. Seven years ago, the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse. Plants were closing. Hundreds of thousands of workers were getting laid off from jobs that had been their ticket to a middle-class life. And as the pain spread across the country, another one million Americans would have lost their jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.

Some said it was too late to turn things around. But I refused to turn my back on so many of the workers that I’d met. Instead, I placed my bet on American workers. I placed my bet on American manufacturing. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We said the auto industry would have to truly change, not just pretend that it did. We got labor and management to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Everyone had some skin in the game.

Our plan wasn’t popular. Critics said it was a “road to socialism,” or a “disaster” waiting to happen. But I’d make that bet again any day of the week. Because today, the American auto industry is back. Since our plan went into effect, our automakers have added more than 640,000 new jobs. We’ve cut the Detroit-area unemployment rate by more than half. The Big Three automakers are raising wages. Seven years ago, auto sales hit a 27-year low. Last year, they hit an all-time high.

Later this month, I’ll visit the Detroit Auto Show to see this progress firsthand. Because I believe that every American should be proud of what our most iconic industry has done.

It’s not unlike what America overall has done these past seven years. Our businesses are now on a 70-month streak of job creation, with more than 14 million new jobs in all. We’ve revamped our schools and the way we pay for college. We’ve made historic investments in clean energy and put ourselves on a path to a low-carbon future. We’ve brought more than 17 million Americans into our health care system, seen health care prices grow at the lowest rate in fifty years, and covered more than 90 percent of our people for the very first time. We’ve even cut our deficits by nearly 75 percent in the process.

The point is America can do anything. Even in times of great challenge and change, our future is entirely up to us. That’s been on my mind while I’m writing my final State of the Union Address. And on Tuesday, I’m going to talk about the choices we have to make to set this country firmly on an even better, brighter course for decades to come.

Ouch. Obama reminded Republicans that they were completely wrong about saving the auto industry, and in the process showed the American people what life might have been like if John McCain (2008) or Mitt Romney (2012) had beaten Obama. McCain thought the fundamentals of our economy were strong. Both Romney and McCain opposed the stimulus and the auto bailout. Republicans were doing their best Herbert Hoover impression after the economic collapse, so it is very possible that they would have turned the Great Recession into a Great Depression.

With a Republican in the White House, stimulus spending would have been replaced by more war spending in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of US ground troops would be in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Instead of being poised of an economic takeoff, the US economy could have been destroyed by four or eight more years of Bush economic policies.

What President Obama did was change the future trajectory of the United States of America. With an election coming up this year, the President reminded voters that they can have the party that was completely wrong about the Great Recession or the party that is setting job creation records.

Obama is setting the stage for the argument that could carry Democrats to victory in 2016.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association