Wasserman Schultz hits Romney on auto bailouts

By Keith Laing - 11/14/11 04:11 PM ET

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his opposition to the auto industry bailouts, saying that he "would have allowed Detroit to go bankrupt."

"Mitt Romney, who purports to be the alternative to President Obama … would have allowed more than a million jobs in the pipeline to just evaporate," Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "We would haven't have had an American auto industry."

The congresswoman's statements picked up on a recurring Democratic talking point about Romney, who polls show is among the front-runners for the Republican nomination and the strongest challenger to President Obama's re-election hopes.

While Wasserman-Schultz did not refer to it by name, her argument was based on a widely read op-ed Romney wrote in The New York Times in the fall of 2008 that argued against the federal government assisting General Motors and Chrysler.

The article was titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” and in it Romney said giving the auto companies financial assistance in 2008 would be worse for them than allowing them to go bankrupt.

“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” Romney wrote in the article. “It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”

He has since defended his position, saying that the conditions that were eventually placed on the federal government's assistance by the Obama administration mirrored his proposals.

Obama's reelection campaign has made clear it sees Romney's position on the auto bailouts as a weakness in a potential general-election match-up between the two. Obama has taken credit for the turnaround of the car companies in recent stump speeches.

“One of the first decisions I made as president was to save the U.S. auto industry from collapse,” he said during a speech last month at a General Motors plant in Orion Township, Mich.

“Today, I can stand here and say the investment paid off,” Obama continued. “The hundreds of thousands of jobs saved made it worth it … taxpayers are being repaid, and plants like this are churning out groundbreaking fuel-efficient cars like the Chevy Sonic.”