White House: Obama’s ‘difficult decisions’ on autos paying off

Two years after President Obama decided to bail out General
Motors, the White House credited the president’s “political courage” and the
efforts of the company’s stakeholders for turning around the Big Three auto
companies.

Ron Bloom, Obama’s auto czar, hailed the positive news U.S.
automakers are enjoying even as he warned that White House officials “by no
means believe that their future is assured.”

“On the other hand, we believe that the steps we took and
the steps they took in partnership with us have positioned some of these
companies to where they have a real chance of success,” Bloom said.

Obama will travel to a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, on
Friday, as the White House tries to make the positive news out of Detroit
proof that the president’s economic policies are working even as the economic
recovery stalls in some sectors.

Bloom noted that of the $80 billion that both the Bush and Obama
administrations injected into the automakers, about $40 billion has been
repaid. Bloom did not dispute figures from the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) estimating that more than $14 billion will not be repaid.

Bloom refused to say when the government might recoup the
rest of its debts from the automakers, saying only that the administration is
looking to do so as early as is practical.

Bloom said that there is “no joy” in someday announcing that
the federal government took a loss from investing in U.S. automakers.

But, Bloom said, “as we record what was lost, we need to
also record what was saved.”

“So while we are obviously extremely conscious of our
obligation to get every penny we can for the taxpayer, we’re also not going to
apologize for the fact that there are literally hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of Americans who are working today because of what happened,” Bloom
said.

In the end, Bloom said the administration is “quite
confident” that the money lost on the auto bailout will be “a far smaller
number than people predicted at the time we did it.”

With a number of other economic indicators causing the White
House heartburn this week, Bloom painted a positive picture of manufacturing on
the upswing.

“In the last year, the Detroit Three have all gained market
share, they have all added jobs and they’ve all shown the ability to make
money; they’re all making substantial profit,” Bloom said. “Those three things
together haven’t been true of the Detroit Three in a long, long time.”