Obama Defends Auto Bailout

Bloomberg reports:

President Barack Obama said the bailout of the auto industry has been vindicated by the resurgence of Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors Co. (GM) and the addition of jobs making vehicles across the country.

Speaking at a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, that he called “the economic rock of the community,” Obama said he refused to let the industry sink in an “uncontrolled free fall” during the recession, an outcome that would have had effects that rippled nationwide. Now “this industry is back on its feet, repaying its debts, gaining ground,” he said.

The economy still faces challenges and “headwinds,” Obama said, hours after the Labor Department reported that payrolls increased by a less-than-projected 54,000 last month and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent from 9 percent.

Obama’s trip to Ohio today is his 14th as president to the battleground state that has backed every winning presidential candidate since 1964.

The stop at the Toledo plant, which assembles Jeep Wranglers, follows a week of White House publicity about the automotive revival. That included a May 28 radio address by Vice President Joe Biden and a June 1 White House report saying $80 billion of federal aid for the auto industry saved at least 1 million jobs at automakers and their suppliers and will cost taxpayers less than originally forecast.

The president is seeking to gain credit for the auto industry’s government-aided revival. Polls at the time showed the rescue plan for GM and Chrysler was unpopular and Republicans criticized it.

Workers should remember “the improbable turnaround that’s taken place here at Chrysler,” Obama told plant workers. “I want you to remember all those voices who were saying, ‘No, no we can’t.”