UPDATE: Auto bailout -- 1 million jobs saved at cost of Pentagon spending for five days

UPDATE: I made a slight miscalculation when I first posted this piece. The price of the bailout is equal to five days and seven hours of Pentagon spending. Also, some readers wrongly interpreted this post as anti-defense. Wrong. I was simply trying to offer a comparison to show how little the rescue loans cost the taxpayer and how much we all gained from them, especially those of us in Michigan.

 

 

So, the auto bailout is over and purist conservatives and rabid Republicans still won't apologize for their attempt to sink the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008-09. 
The final figures show that the government lost nearly $9.3 billion in the process of loaning $80 billion to the two automakers during the Bush and Obama administrations. That's far below the $44 billion loss that was anticipated early in the process. 
In fact, the bailout saved an estimated 1 to 3 million jobs and prevented a much deeper economic downturn nationwide, but in the end it cost less than what the Pentagon spends in less than a week.

Yes, that's right: If you spend $9.3 billion to save America's premier manufacturing industry, you save more than 1 million jobs and much more. If you spend $9.3 billion at the Pentagon, based on their annual budget, that money will last five days and seven hours.

Of course, now that GM and Chrysler are flourishing far beyond all expectations, the tax dollar amounts are the least embarrassing aspect of this whole chapter for free-market conservatives who said the rescue loans were a mistake.
When the auto bailout was debated in Congress, one GOP House member said that trying to save GM and Chrysler would be “like putting a tourniquet on a dead man.” Several members of Congress said that loans for the Detroit automakers would be “pouring money down a rat hole.” 
While the reality is big sales and profits for the automakers and tens of thousands of new jobs, a 2013 study concluded that the conservative approach -- death to Detroit -- would have had far-reaching ripple effects, with many suppliers going belly up, in addition to the liquidation of GM and Chrysler. Approximately 90 percent of U.S. employees  at Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and BMW would have been laid off for at least a year, the study concluded. Michigan would still suffer from double-digit unemployment rates in 2014.

Beyond the economics, think of all that the Big Three have accomplished in just five years from a creative standpoint. Without the federal loans, there would not be a new Chevy Stingray, no retro Camaro, no 50th anniversary Mustang, no revamped Dodge Charger. 
So, I say again, when are the congressional Republicans who tried to stop the bailout, especially those Southern Senators who cavalierly predicted doom, going  to apologize for being so wrong?