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National Review has posted a recent interview with Sen. DeMint on the auto bailout in which he lays out the reasoning for the growing GOP opposition to getting it passed.
The House passed a $14-billion, stopgap bailout of the automotive industry on Wednesday night. But in the Senate, Republicans have the votes to prevent it. And despite urging from the exiting Bush administration, they appear poised to do so.
This is big. Normally, lame-duck congresses concern themselves with far less consequential matters. The addition of seven or eight more Democrats in the next Congress may come weeks too late to prevent the bankruptcy (or, in the worst case, failure) of General Motors.
In the hours leading up to the critical votes, NRO spoke with Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), a staunch opponent of the bailout.
Click here to get read NRO's questions and DeMint's answers.
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Following Wednesday's news conference, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) explains in an interview with FOX News that the auto bailout proposal needs to be changed significantly before he would consider supporting it. He also echoes Sen. DeMint's opinion that it would be better for the bill to fail and for Detroit's Big Three to be forced to restructure under Chapter 11 bankruptcy:
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Republican Sens. Richard Shelby (Ala.), John Ensign (Nev.), David Vitter (La.), Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.) explain their opposition to the proposal auto bailout for Detroit's Big Three during a press conference on Wednesday:
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Sen. DeMint discusses the latest developments of the proposed auto bailout and explains why bankruptcy would still be the best way to save Detroit's Big Three:
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Earlier today, Larry Kudlow posted a blog over at National Review's The Corner about finding a pro-growth alternative to bailing out the auto industry and so forth. His solution: supply-side tax cuts. Such tax cuts, he writes, would "jolt the economy back toward growth."
Read his full post here.
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Today's Wall Street Journal contains an informative editorial on the "other" auto industry -- the one not at the verge of going bankrupt in Detroit -- and makes the case that it would be "deeply unfair for government now to ask taxpayers" to suffer the consequences of poor management decisions and union contracts:
The men from Detroit will jet into Washington tomorrow -- presumably going commercial this time -- to make another pitch for a taxpayer rescue. Meanwhile, in the other American auto industry you rarely read about, car makers are gaining market share and adjusting amid the sales slump, without seeking a cent from the government.
These are the 12 "foreign," or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America's South and Midwest. Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy. The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly. Click here to read more.
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Blogging for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jim Wooten explains why Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) represents the GOP's past and how the GOP needs to proceed in the future:
Two figures in the Stevens story highlight the Republican Party of the past and its promise of the future. Alaska voters should have kicked Stevens out. Had his defeat given Democrats the 60 votes they need in the Senate to run roughshod over the opposition, I’d not have objected. Too bad he didn’t have the grace to resign after he was convicted of lying about accepting home improvements without paying for them.
He’s the past. One of the GOP’s rising stars, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, stood tall in moving to expel Stevens from the GOP conference and stripping him of choice committee assignments on Appropriations and on Commerce had he won. Until the absentee ballots from Anchorage were counted, it appeared he had...
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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has an op-ed in the New York Times today that does a fantastic job explaining why bankruptcy, rather than a bailout, is the best hope for a Big Three turnaround:
"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
Click here to read the full article.
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Sens. DeMint and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) discuss their opposing views on the proposed $25-billion auto bailout last night on Bloomberg News.
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"We have the unions paying off the Democrats with their votes and the Democrats paying off the unions with this auto bailout." -- Sen. DeMint, as quoted by The State.
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