Auto Bailout Talks Collapse as Senate Deadlocks Over Wages

Well it looks like Mitch McConnell and his boys are going to get there way:

An eleventh-hour effort to salvage a proposed $14 billion rescue plan for the auto industry collapsed late last night as Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on the timing of deep wage cuts for union workers, killing the legislative plan and threatening America's carmakers with bankruptcy.

"We're not going to get to the finish line. That's just the way it is. There's too much difference between the two sides," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced after 10 p.m., concluding a marathon negotiating session that ended in gridlock. Reid warned that financial markets could plummet when trading opens this morning.

"I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow. It's not going to be a pleasant sight," he said.

As I've said before, I think we need to bailout the Big 3 for the simple reason that there are millions of jobs of everyday middle class people on the line.

However, while some partisans might be cursing the minority party, I can understand why reservations about an auto bailout. Why give away billions of dollars to companies on the verge of the collapse because of incompetence and stupidity? Of course, in almost any other time, I think you do let the big 3 fail. Our economy would survive, and American manufacturing would evolve and change, just like businesses always evolves and changes into something else.

But you cannot let it happen during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Maybe the government is just staving off the inevitable, and the car companies will collapse eventually. So be it. But I don't want to have a Herbert Hoover-style of dealing with financial crisises and sit back and do nothing.