...and we can do it again.
After Pearl Harbor, FDR called in the automakers and told them what had to be done. Within months, they were building tanks.
In late 1945, Truman called in other manufacturers. And within months, the RCA plant in Camden, New Jersey was making television sets.
If we're giving billions to the auto industry, isn't it time we do some planning there, as well??
More after the jump.
We are preparing to rebuild infrastructure, and here in the Washington, DC area, that means the need for new rail cars for our Metro system, which carried record ridership last year.
Why are we buying rail cars that are assembled in Italy?
If we are spending billions of dollars to keep the Big Three afloat, shutting down assembly plants, and placing orders for mass transit cars overseas, why not tie the three actions together and create some jobs here in the USA?
How long would it take to get Bombardier or some other company to partner with GM or Ford or Chrysler to retool an assembly plant somewhere in Michigan or Ohio to put together mass transit cars?
If it's our tax dollars that are buying these rail cars, I don't think it's too much to ask that we find a way for American workers to put the cars together.
The government and American industry joined to outsource the engine of economic growth. Now it's time to bring that engine back home. We have to make things again, and assemble them.
As Roosevelt pointed out, there are idle hands, empty factories, and work to be done. The same holds true today.