The U.S. manufacturing sector, and domestic automakers in particular, desperately need help easing health-care costs and other burdens to ensure their viability, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on Friday.
"We're facing a Category 5 economic hurricane," the Democratic governor told Reuters, when asked about the plight of struggling U.S. automakers.
"This is an emergency," she said, adding that the administration of President George W. Bush can ill-afford to deal with it the same way it did Hurricane Katrina and its impact on New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf coast.
The governor of Michigan discusses that the industry with the countries 3rd and 4th largest companies are getting crushed. Its a pity the president is to busy dealing with the fact that he lied us into a war to answer her letter.
What I do not understand about the debate for Universal Healthcare is the impression that this would hurt our economy and turn it into a slow growth European economy. There are policies that could make this happen. Universal Healthcare is not amongst them. It would remove a critical competitive disadvantage that our companies have compared to the Japanese and Europe and it would allow for more labor mobility which is in general what helps growth in an economy.
In addition when are Americans going to face up that there is a pension crisis in this country (there is in other countries as well, but at least it is discussed). It is like the MSM does not realize the "Average Joe and Joanne" are getting screwed to the wall. Anyone notice that the airlines got bailed out after 9/11, but the employees all had there pensions cut.