Two days before the Michigan primary, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred over the auto industry bailouts at Sunday’s CNN debate.
“If everyone had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed,” she said in front of an audience in Flint, Michigan, not far from Detroit.
Clinton fired the opening shot for Sanders’ opposition to the auto industry bailout.
“I voted to save the auto industry. He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry,” she said.
Sanders countered that Clinton also supported the financial industry bailout and the exchange got so heated that at one point, he cut her off.
“Excuse me, I’m talking,” he said, as she tried to interject during his attack on her Wall Street connections. “I will tell my story and you tell yours. “
“Your story is voting for disastrous trade agreements and corporate America. Did I vote against the bailout when billionaires destroyed this economy, they went to Congress and said, ‘Please, we will be good boys, bail us out,”” Sanders said. “You know what I said? Let the billionaires themselves bail out Wall Street. It shouldn’t be the middle class of this country.”
Sanders actually supported a bailout for the auto industry when it came up as standalone legislation in December 2008. However that billed failed to make it out of the Senate. The auto bailout was eventually funded through the larger legislation passed and signed into law earlier, in October 2008, that bailed out the financial industry. Sanders had opposed the earlier bailout legislation.
At the debate, Sanders also bashed Clinton for her support for various trade deals — a criticism she responded to by pointing to a trade deal she opposed when she was a senator. He also mocked the Export Import Bank, a federal agency that offers loans to businesses and has the support of many Democrats as well as business-aligned Republicans.
“Isn’t it tragic that the large multinational corporations making billions and shutting down in America and going to China and going to Mexico?” Sanders said sarcastically. “Absolutely they need a handout from the American middle class. I don’t think so.”
You had a chance here to clarify a confusing topic. The vote was for the Wall Street bailout, and bailing out Wall Street would enable Wall Street to help save Detroit. Essentially Wall Street held Detroit and the entire US economy hostage for their own sweet deal. The outgoing Bush administration created a sweetheart deal and the incoming Obama administration was afraid to refuse it. So Hillary approved of the sweetheart Wall Street Bailout, which Bernie refused. If it had been rejected, a better deal would have come forth, negotiated by the Obama administration instead of the Bush Administration’s sweetheart deal.
Really. And you know this how?
That’s one way to spin it. And without a doubt, its a spin.
GM was literally days away from going out of business completely. Chrysler wasn’t too far behind. There was no time to negotiate a new deal for just the auto companies. And quite frankly, there would be no point if all of Wall Street collapsed in the meantime.
What you, and apparently Bernie, just don’t seem to grasp,is that Wall Street isn’t made up exclusively of billionaire CEOs. It includes the pension funds, the 401(k)s, the various IRAs of hundreds of millions of everyday Americans. It includes the finanical markets that every single business in America depends on to finance their day to day operations, as well as their long term financing of expansions. When you scream about “killing Wall Street”, you kill countless of other Main Street companies and people as well.
And therein lies the rub. Its complicated, not the simplistic bad guys vs. good guys that Bernie loves to peddle. The discussion they had concerning the Export Import Bank is another perfect example. Yes, Boeing heavily uses it to finance it overseas sales. But so do hundreds of smaller businesses. Bernie wants to kill it because Boeing uses it…and damn all the little people who get killed in the process.
So glad you’re here tonight. I’m coming off my second 12 hour work day and I don’t have the energy to argue with the simpletons making stuff up. You’ll pick up the slack for me, right? I’ll get your back another day.
LOL.
Well, as much as I can. Unfortunately I only got to watch the first half of the debate before it go pre-empted in this household for Dowton Abby.
Sunday nights are tough TV nights here. Debates, DA, Walking Dead, Billions, and Vinyl