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Help or don’t help

From NYTimes.com: Obama Asks Bush to Provide Help for Automakers

Mr. Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Mr. Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.

This is one thing that I hate about politics.  If you feel like aiding the automakers is the right thing, then do it.  If you don’t, then don’t do it.  A decision like this deserves to be decided on its own merit, not as part of deal for something else.

I am torn about the idea of aiding automakers.  I understand that jobs are at stake, but the automakers are primarily at fault for their own problems.  When has GM produced a car that you would actually want to drive?  They have a fundamental problem that lending 25 billion dollars won’t solve.  People don’t want to drive the cars they sell.

If you lend them the money, will this buy them the time to be able to fix the company and produce fuel-efficient and technologically innovative cars?  The irony of this is that GM has spent years lobbying the government against increased fuel efficiency standards.  If they had just gone along with this and improved their efficiency, their problems wouldn’t be as dire as they are now.

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