Congress Should Be The Ones Answering The Questions

The whole Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac debacle is proof enough that government needs to stay out of the business sector. Most, if not all, of the people on Capitol Hill have never nor ever will run a business, yet they all seem to think they know how. We have seen the results of bad government regulation, mandating that loans be made available to people who could not pay them back. This type of practice was bound to come around and bite us in the back, and now it has. The true travesty in all of this is that the very people who caused the problem are now claiming that they have the solution. And what is their solution? Their solution is more of the same, more of the same government intervention, more of the same ridiculous hearings on Capitol Hill led by Henry “Nostrilitus” Waxman where the people who are asking the questions should be the ones answering questions.

We are now watching as Congress is putting on the necessary show to prove what a tough decision it is to have to bail out the auto industry. Sixty one percent of the American people to not want this bailout to go through (Rooney, December 4, 2008), but we all know it is going to happen. Congress has dragged the auto execs up on Capitol Hill to answer questions, yet it should be Congress answering questions from the auto execs. Here are a few questions that I would like to see members of Congress answering.

What did you think was going to happen to the auto industry when you were continually regulating the types of cars they had to build via emissions standards regulations, fuel economy regulations, etc that change every year? With every new regulation that you passed, did you think about the costs to the auto industry to redesign vehicles that would comply?

What did you think was going to happen to the auto industry when you mandated that auto companies manufacture small, fuel efficient, death-trap cars even if no one wanted them?

Did you consider what the effect on the auto industry, which is geared around the premise of cheap, available fuel, would be when you continually refused to enact policies that would ensure the continual flow of cheap fuel for the American consumer, such as encouraging domestic supplies and lower fuel taxes, and instead did just the opposite?

When you mandated that gasoline has to have at least 10 percent ethanol, did you consider what the effect would be on the auto industry for them to re-engineer engines and parts to run on this type of fuel?

When you mandated that employers have to provide healthcare benefits, did you consider the effect on the Big Three, who has millions of employees and retirees and whose “foreign competitors have no retirees to take care of and received huge subsidies to build Greenfield plants in America to augment their imports to the United States” (Brown, November 24, 2008)?

Have you ever considered how the world’s highest corporate tax rate of thirty five percent might affect domestic automakers?

I would love to see the auto CEOs stand up to Congress and say, “You know what? You have made it virtually impossible to run a successful business here in America, not to mention the extreme costs that the union labor incurs. Therefore, we are rejecting any bailout and instead are going to declare bankruptcy, close all of our plants, move to Mexico where we can build cars people want at a price they can afford, where we don’t have to worry about all your ridiculous regulations, where we won’t have to be dragged before your hearings only to be berated for flying and sent back to complete a homework assignment over Thanksgiving, where we won’t have to worry about labor costs being twice as high as our competitors, where the corporate tax rate is not the highest in the world, and where there isn’t a government and entire side of the political spectrum that sees big business as evil, sees profits and success as obscene windfalls, and wants to tax everything they can get their hands on and regulate everything else. It’s been nice doing business here, but not to nice. See ya.”