EDITORIAL: Government should help the Big Three

Nov 15, 2008 (Tonawanda News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- As the bailout plan passed by Congress last month continues to take shape -- and shift purposes from its original intent -- the U.S. Treasury is seeing more and more struggling industries come forward with hands extended.

And while we would caution against using the bailout as a giant Band-Aid for anyone with a boo-boo, at least one industry should get consideration. That would be the American auto industry.

The struggles of the Big Three have been well documented over the last several years. Automakers received a deal just recently that gave them loans to help remain solvent. Unfortunately, those loans weren't enough and General Motors Corp. might run out of money sometime in the next few months. That would lead to a massive bankruptcy and a trickle-down effect in communities like this one with potentially dire consequences.

Yes, GM's engine plant in the Town of Tonawanda is a large-scale employer, and yet not nearly as large as some plants situated in towns far smaller than ours.

But even more than the obvious impact a bankrupt auto industry would have on the economy is the psychological and symbolic impact. If the auto industry is allowed to go under with anything less than an all-out effort by the government to save it, people with blue collar jobs will feel justifiably betrayed. Our leaders have bent over backward to help failed investment banks, many of which find themselves compromised due to their own ill-advised risks.

Auto workers have done nothing to warrant a pink slip. They punch a clock and, for generations, have put the gas in our economy's tank. Discounting the obviously poor decisions by those at the top, we still owe nothing less than an earnest rescue effort to the workers who have helped shape and underwrite our way of life for so long.

This money shouldn't come free of assurances, though. If the government is going to invest in the auto industry (something no one else is doing these days, and for good reason), it should seek promises from CEOs for more forward-looking business plans. Fleets that provide real choice for a newly fuel-conscious public. The industry needs to shed its previously unwise position against more stringent fuel efficiency standards; it should be noted that had American automakers heeded this advice years ago, they might not be in such dire shape today.

But even with all the challenges and mistakes made in the past, we believe a timely injection of capital into these companies could pay large dividends down the road. The failure to do so could undermine an iconic bedrock of American industrialism.

Considering we're doing so much for so many others, it seems the fair and prudent choice.

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