Why Americans will continue to make things, cars included

In the fall of 2008, our entire economy was on the brink. The stock market plummeted, unemployment in some Indiana counties topped 20% and the American auto industry was itself on the brink. Losses from both GM and Chrysler put the livelihoods of the men and women who work for auto manufacturers, auto parts suppliers and auto dealers -— some of the hardest-working people I know —- on the line.

{mosads}They were not alone. Had the American auto industry ceased to exist, many non-auto-related businesses and the jobs they support also would have been stressed to the breaking point. In many communities around our state, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores and shopping malls do a significant amount of business with the thousands of Hoosiers who earn a living in the auto industry. That business would have disappeared if the domestic auto industry had been allowed to fail.

With the potential collapse of GM and Chrysler, Hoosiers faced the loss of tens of thousands of auto industry-related jobs. Losing these jobs -— and, importantly, losing them all at once —- would have sent our economy into a tailspin. Extending loans to the American auto industry and the tens of thousands of jobs that went with it was about protecting the economic future of our state and, more importantly, preserving the American Dream for many Hoosiers. So it is no surprise that the Indiana delegation stepped up in a bipartisan way. Senator Lugar and then-Congressman Souder joined every Democrat in our delegation at the time to pass legislation extending guaranteed loans to GM and Chrysler that allowed them to restructure.

Some assailed it as a bailout; some called it radical, bad business or a government takeover. A recent visitor to northwest Indiana, Mitt Romney, openly called for us to allow Detroit to go bankrupt and take hundreds of thousands of American jobs down the tubes with it. Romney, who made his fortune by eliminating American jobs, warned that any offer of assistance would only ensure the failure of the industry in the long haul.

In reality, what we did was none of those things. Democrats and Republicans came together to provide a helping hand to the auto industry with a loan that demonstrated our refusal to allow our economy to go over a cliff. We supported a major restructuring that required shared sacrifice on both sides in order to remake the industry. The 2008 economic crisis could have been the end of the American auto industry. Instead, the turnaround is remarkable.

The number of auto industry-related jobs in Indiana hit a low in the summer of 2009, dipping to just over 78,000 jobs. But, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25,000 auto industry-related jobs were added in Indiana from June 2009 and June 2011. Thanks in part to historic investments by Chrysler in its transmission plant in Kokomo, by GM in its transmission plant in Bedford, and investments in other communities across our great state, we’re now back to more than 100,000 auto industry-related jobs.

Certainly, we need to do more to create jobs. Here in Indiana, we know private enterprise is the engine of our economy and always will be. To the extent government can help by encouraging small and large business investments, it should. But, bottom line, we have and will continue to make things in this country. I can proudly report today that Americans still make cars and trucks. Hoosiers still make cars and trucks. And hardworking men and women will continue to make cars, trucks and the parts that make them run across the country thanks to a common-sense, bipartisan effort to give the American auto industry new life.