Mitt Romney defended having said he deserved some credit for the success of the auto-industry bailout in an interview on Fox News Thursday, explaining that he pushed for the managed bankruptcy process that eventually took place.
Denying that he was against the rescue, Romney pointed to his 2008 New York Times op-ed “Let Detroit go Bankrupt” as evidence that he was always for a managed bankruptcy process.
“This is back when George Bush was president and I said, ‘don’t write them a check. They need to go through a managed bankruptcy. They have to get rid of the excess costs of the UAW and other excess costs, and then the government can help support. But don’t write them a check.'”
“The president finally came around and they went through a managed bankruptcy and now they are back on their feet,” he added.
Host Neil Cavuto pointed out that the bankruptcy process would not have worked without government support, and Romney said he was “open” to that from the beginning as well.
At the time, in that op-ed, I said if government support is needed in the bankruptcy, and the government has to provide guarantees, that is something I would be open to. Obviously, we do not want the auto industry to go out of business and I was on Fox and also on the “Meet the Press” talking about this. We would not have the industry go out of business but it needed to go through bankruptcy to get rid of the excessive cost before the government support kicked in and we spent $20 billion before the president finally decided to let the companies go in bankruptcy. That is what he should have done from the beginning.
As TPM has reported, Romney’s position on the auto bailout has been inconsistent. In an op-ed in the Detroit News in February, Romney wrote that “I believe that without [Obama’s] intervention things there would be better.” In June 2011, Romney told CNN’s Piers Morgan that the rescue would have worked with minimum federal help and that the bailouts were a mistake.
