Oct 23, 2012 No Comments ›› Chuck Biscuits
Excerpted from The Daily Caller: The text of a 2008 op-ed on the auto-bailout by Republican nominee Mitt Romney debunks attacks by President Barack Obama, who accused Romney of changing his position during the third and final presidential debate on Monday night.
“If we had taken your advice, Gov. Romney, about our auto industry, we’d be buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China,” Obama said.
“But what we also have been able to do is position ourselves so we can start rebuilding America, and that’s what my plan does,” Obama said later. “Making sure that we’re bringing manufacturing back to our shores so that we’re creating jobs here, as we’ve done with the auto industry, not rewarding companies that are shipping jobs overseas.”
Toward the end of the debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney hit back against Obama’s auto bailout statements.
“I just want to take one of those points, again, attacking me as not talking about an agenda for, for getting more trade and opening up more jobs in this country,” Romney said. “But the president mentioned the auto industry and that somehow I would be in favor of jobs being elsewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“I’m a son of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. My dad was head of a car company,” Romney added. “I like American cars. And I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry. My plan to get the industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks. It was President [George W.] Bush that wrote the first checks. I disagree with that. I said they need – these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy. And in that process, they can get government help and government guarantees, but they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of excess cost and the debt burden that they’d – they’d built up.”
As Romney was starting his next sentence, Obama cut across him, saying, “Gov. Romney, that’s not what you said.”
“You can take a look at the op-ed,” Romney replied.
