Bob Corker's chickens come home to roost

Monday, Sep 20, 2010

The senator voted against the auto-bailout, but attended a GM plant reopening ceremony. The workers were not amused

By Andrew Leonard
Salon.com

President Obama likes to joke about the Republican lawmakers who opposed his stimulus bill yet still managed to show up and preen for the cameras at ribbon-cutting ceremonies for projects funded by Recovery Act. But after hearing the same line delivered over and over again, I'm betting audiences are getting tired. He needs some new material. So how about making fun of the Republican politicians who voted against the auto-bailout and yet still had the gall to attend a ceremony celebrating the reopening of an idled GM plant?

Yes, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., I'm looking at you.

Last week, GM announced that it would rehire 483 laid-off workers at its massive Spring Hill, Tenn., plant. At a ceremony to celebrate the news on Friday, Tennessee politicians flocked to get a piece of the happy action, including Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, along with Rep. Marsha Blackburn -- all three of whom voted against the auto bailout. The UAW employees in attendance booed lustily, saving their strongest scorn for Corker, who made no friends in union ranks two years ago when he argued that no federal aid should go to American car companies until and unless worker wages and benefits were reduced to levels "competitive" with foreign labor.

GM's employees did end up taking a hit in the managed bankruptcy organized by the Obama administration. But it wasn't as brutal a blow as southern Republicans representing work-for-hire states like Tennessee would have preferred. And since it was a Democratic administration that ultimately came to the rescue of the auto industry, the auto-bailout immediately had to be dubbed "a major power grab." Socialism! Or Fascism! Whatever -- it was bad, bad, bad!

(More here.)