Paul Ryan, at a Michigan campaign event:
"We lost four auto factories in the area I represent in just the last four years," Ryan said. "We lost our plant, our GM plant in Janesville, our Chrysler Kenosha plant, we lost two Delphi plants in Oak Creek. Trust me, I come from Detroit West. We know we need a healthy auto sector. I come from a GM town, and as we said in Janesville, we've always said—as GM goes, so goes Janesville."
"Well, we've all gotten knocked down. We've seen some carnage in the auto sector. Know this: we want the strongest auto sector…We lost 38,000 manufacturing jobs just in the last two months. Over 10,000 of them came from auto. The good news is if you put the right people in place and get the right policies in place, we can turn this around."
I'm sorry. Paul Ryan is playing second fiddle to whom? Mitt Romney. And Mitt Romney's plan for Detroit was what? To
let it go bankrupt. To skip the step where the government helped GM and Chrysler
survive long enough to restructure and just let them die right then and there in late 2008 and early 2009. Luckily for workers all up and down the auto supply chain, and for small business owners in auto towns, that didn't happen. Mitt Romney wasn't president, Barack Obama was president, and Obama made sure the American auto industry survived.
Then there are his jobs claims. While Ryan is correct that the U.S. has lost manufacturing jobs for the past two months, what he fails to note is that the U.S.
gained manufacturing jobs every other month this year. And the auto industry? We all know
that story, even if Ryan is hoping we'll forget. GM reported
record profits in 2011. GM was
the world's biggest automaker in 2011. The industry
expects to add 167,000 jobs by 2015.
But good news does not fit the Romney-Ryan campaign message, so ignore all that.