RUSH: CNBC today had a video clip, a segment I should say, that deals with the auto industry since they’re being talked about in terms of being bailed out. They had a chart and I got hold of it here. When you look at the chart, it’s no wonder that General Motors and Ford and Chrysler are having financial problems. Their costs are 53% higher than Toyota and 132% higher than other manufacturing. The cost per hour to manufacture at the Big Three auto companies is $73.20, and that’s total compensation per hour, selected workers, 2007-2008. At Toyota, it’s $48 an hour, management and professional, $47.57, goods producing, $31.59. All workers, $28.48 an hour, average out all workers and it costs the Big Three auto companies $73.20 an hour, and a lot of this is they’re paying people that no longer work for them, and these pensions and the unions — if we bail out the auto companies, let me ask you a quick question.
If today all three auto companies received, what they were talking about, $25 or $50 billion, they divvy up, what change do you expect from these companies? What change would you expect? Well, there won’t be any right off the bat. They’ve already got $25 billion that has been pledged for retooling and rebuilding, but do you realize what’s happened, the federal government and these executives, they are so strained with these union contracts. This is not a bailout of the Big Three, this is a bailout of the United Autoworkers Union. That’s what this is all about, folks. It is a bailout of the United Autoworkers Union. It is a Democrat sop to Jennifer Granholm to make sure that her reputation doesn’t get sullied ’cause she’s already running a state in recession that she helped put there, along with her party. This is a bailout of the United Auto Workers and the union contracts and everything else that goes hand in hand here. The executives are in such trouble at these companies, they are promising everything. ‘Well, of course, we’ll make all kinds of cars that get better mileage and we will limit executive pay, and we will end golden parachutes.’
Liberal Democrats are infecting and perverting elements of the private sector and the free market private sector that I never dreamed would ever happen in my lifetime. We’re bailing out unions, is what we’re doing, and we’re going to be bailing out credit card companies and whoever else. You wouldn’t believe the number of lobbyists that are signing up to get their hands on the bailout money. Lobbyists for various companies are lobbying the Treasury department for their companies to get a percentage of the bailout. Why should it be any different with a bailout than it is any other pile of money? Congress sits there with a budget every year of three trillion bucks, lobbyists and everybody else. This is not against lobbyists, by the way, you’re never going to get rid of them. I don’t care what any politician says, you’re never going to get rid of them, they do what they do. Most of them actually perform a service. At any rate, I don’t want to get off on a tangent with that. But why did everybody expect purity and comity and seriousness when you throw a pile of $700 billion at people?
Every year they get three trillion and everybody starts divvying that up, who’s going to get that portion, lobbyists start lobbying Congress, ‘Oh, this group needs some money, we need to build a bridge out there.’ Congressman and Senators do their own lobbying. So now we’ve got the $700 billion bailout bill, which could not wait, it was a crisis, it was definitely this country’s future, its very existence rested on this bailout being passed in 24 hours. And then as weeks went by before it was passed or a couple weeks, everything kept chugging along, people kept getting up and going at work, stores had food in them, gas stations had gasoline, but it was a crisis, and we had to deal with it, we had to deal with it immediately, otherwise the country would simply implode and cease to exist. But the country kept on working. So now the original purpose of the bailout has been broomed, the Treasury secretary says, nah, we’re not going to buy up that bad paper. He begged banks to start lending today, and then he apologized to the world for the United States failing to meet its responsibilities and obligations and having contributed to the global financial collapse.
Well, all that means is that all these little tinhorn dictators and every other hapless fool leader around the world is, ‘Okay, you take the blame for it? Fine, well we’ve been irreparably harmed by your immoral behavior as a superpower. Where is my damage payment?’ So we’re going to have the world coming at us with their hands out. They already come at us now through the United Nations in stealth ways. Now they’re just going to be open about it. Well, the Treasury secretary apologized. He said the United States is responsible for all this hell that’s going globally and the financial markets and other areas of economics. He said the United States is to blame for it. So in the meantime we’re going to bail out the United Auto Workers and we’re going to bail out credit card companies and in the process the federal government, run by Democrats, are going to have their fingers in every business they can get them in, and they’re not going to ever let go of it.
And so they couldn’t actually muster the votes for limits on executive pay. And some of you, by the way, may say, ‘Well, Rush, that’s pretty good, that might actually help employees like management a little better. You know, there’s a lot of resentment out there, Rush, ’cause these executives pay themselves all this money and the workers don’t get very much at all.’ Fine. Okay, so you’re going to limit executive pay. The last time they tried this, it led to stock options. They’ll find ways around this. There are always ways around this. But even if there aren’t any ways around, even if executive pay is limited, it ain’t going to make the workers any happier. Their paychecks aren’t going to get any bigger. That’s not the result. We’re not going to have a trickle-down, if you will. So all these years we’ve wanted to eliminate executive pay, now executives are going right along with it, and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, these people are designing cars.