GOP Senator/Psychic Jim DeMint

GOP Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has warned of “riots” in the streets should the proposed $14 Billion Auto Bailout pass. “We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out,” the South Carolina Senator told an interviewer.

I get the feeling that Senator DeMint is conveniently mistaking the sit in at the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago for a riot. I also get the feeling that he’s conveniently forgetting that over $700 Billion, a figure at least 50 times as large as the one being floated for Detroit automakers, was recently approved in a bailout package for the financial industry on Wall Street with no reports of riots to be found in its aftermath. Let’s face it, this is America and, by and large, we do what we’re told, even in the face of catastrophe.

What Senator DeMint doesn’t mention is the naked power play at work in the United States Senate over the Auto Bailout package and the name of the game is Union versus Right-to-Work states. First bear in mind that the South is the power base for what’s left of the Republican party, with 20 of the 22 US Senate seats there being currently held by Republicans. All southern states have right-to-work laws on the books which allow for non-union factories. As a result many foreign auto manufacturers have set up shop in the South in an effort to skirt around the United Auto Workers union and their pesky contracts which allow employees things like good wages and decent health and retirement benefits. Meanwhile, most Northern and Midwestern states do not have right-to-work laws and have factories that fall strictly under the UAW contracts. The Big Three is bound into these contracts from agreements it made with the UAW decades ago. But should the automakers be forced into Chapter 11, a bankruptcy judge could rewrite the labor contracts of the car companies, which could then in turn send factories and jobs from the reemerging industry down south to right-to-work states. Should the Detroit companies fail to recover, the South will still benefit from foreign automakers building more factories there in order to satisfy the hole left in the American market after the departure of the domestics. So basically Big Three bankruptcy is win-win for Dixie.

But more than sheer financial politics are at play with the GOP Senators strong opposition voiced thus far to the Auto Bailout. The Republican party is reeling from the results of this year’s November elections and is desperate to find a new voice going forward. Acting tough on the bailout gives the party the opportunity to for once look like it’s not simply supporting Big Business at every turn - when in fact the play has more to do with hurting labor unions, steadfast supporters of the Democrats - while, also for once, providing some consistency on the accountability message of the party for both Welfare Moms and Fortune 500 CEOs alike. It’s good politics, particularly for an opposition party with no real power to actually enact anything of its own. However if 2,000,000+ jobs are in turn lost over this latest bit of Republican political theater, from a party that has consistently and disastrously put its own fortunes ahead of that of the nation as a whole, it’s going to be a little hard to explain why an additional $14 Billion couldn’t have been loaned to Detroit.

You can takepart by emailing your Senator and demanding they pass a responsible bailout package for Detroit immediately.

LINKS:

Business & Media Institute: GOP Senator warns of “riots” if automakers are bailed out

Reuters: Obama hopeful auto bailout deal possible this week

Fox News: Lawmakers, Auto Representatives Try to Salvage Bailout Package