Revisionist History

My Republican friends are incessantly parroting the notion that the President's actions over the last two years were purely political. Things like the Stimulus, Auto bailout, TARP, etc. In my view this is lazy thinking and only serves the lowest common denominator in our debate.

What really burns me is that most of the actions which were taken over the past two years were either started by George W Bush or had similarly been done by previous Republican Presidents including the conservatives hero, Ronald Reagan.

However, my Republican friends keep insisting that the President bailed out the auto companies to help his union buddies? This could not be further from reality. It was reported quite broadly that if GM & Chrysler went down, the supplier network would have went down, which would have taken Ford down with them. The resulting Tsunami would have wiped out not only the thousands of jobs from union workers, but an additional 3 million jobs that made up the supplier networks, dealers, supporting, and symbiotic businesses (restaurants, dry cleaners, diners, etc) in those communities.


History Lesson:

• Which President signed the TARP legislation into law?
• Who was the first President to bail out a private company with taxpayer monies?
• Who was the first President to bail out a automotive company?
• Which President Bush or Obama, that first signed legislation to bail out GM & Chrysler?

Answers:

• George Bush $700 Billion
• Ronald Reagan who did it twice, bailing out Chrysler and the Savings & Loan institutions
• Ronald Reagan, Chrysler Corp 1980
• George W Bush, $17 Billion in loan guarantees to GM and Chrysler

 Here is a summary of the most notable Bailouts, which up until President Obama, were all done by Republican Presidents.