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UAW Members to Biden: We've Got Your Back
LORDSTOWN, Ohio – Wearing shirts with the United Auto Workers seal and the message “You had our back. Now we have yours,” autoworkers employed at the General Motors complex here welcomed Vice President Joe Biden to this morning’s rally at Local 1714’s union hall on Salt Springs Road.
The event was the first in a series of campaign stops this Labor Day weekend for Biden as Democrats attempt to drive home the message that providing federal financing during the bankruptcy reorganizations of GM and Chrysler saved the domestic auto industry and more than one million jobs. Biden’s appearance in the Mahoning Valley, his second in just three months, followed last night’s conclusion of the Republican National Convention where Mitt Romney accepted his party’s nomination in a speech that mentioned the domestic auto industry only in relation to his father’s role as CEO of the former American Motors.
While GM's Lordstown Complex has welcomed President Obama, presidential primary candidates, governors and legislators from both political parties to its plant here, this election season, with the auto industry bailout a major issue, the plant is said to be off-limits. In announcing Aug. 23 that it would invest $200 million to build the next-generation Chevrolet Cruze at the plant, GM’s only political shout-out went to the Republicans. Said the automaker’s manufacturing manager Arvin Jones in a written statement: “A special thanks goes to Gov. John Kasich and his team at JobsOhio for their strong leadership and advocacy for GM and our employees.”
Taking the stage to open the rally, Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan indirectly referenced Kasich’s convention speech, then gave the man Kasich unseated, Ted Strickland, the credit or Ohio's economic progress, “for every single project that has been a positive for Ohio in the last few years has [Strickland’s] fingerprints on it.”
In his remarks, Strickland deflected his friend’s plaudits. The economic recovery Ohio is enjoying is “not because of Ted Strickland, and it’s certainly not because of John Kasich,” the former governor said. “It’s because of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”
Biden was introduced by Dave Green, president of Local 1714, who vowed union leaders would do everything they can to get out the Democratic vote.
“He had our backs and now we have his. We’re going to work the phone banks, we going to knock on doors. We’ve got to tell the people the truth,” Green said.
Biden's remarks repeatedly referenced was said at the Republican Convention and “what they didn’t tell you.”
Within minutes of taking the stage, the vice president blasted the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, for his convention speech that claimed GM closed its plant in Janesville under Obama’s watch. Production actually ended at the Janesville plant in December 2008, before Obama took office, devastating the Republican Ryan’s hometown. “He didn’t tell you that,” Biden said.
“And what they didn’t say is but for the sacrifices you all made and the courage of the president of the United States, all the GM plants would have closed,” he continued.
Since the auto rescue, GM, Chrysler and Ford have earmarked a combined $23 billion in spending for expansions and upgrades at their U.S. auto plants. “What [the Republicans] didn’t tell you is it’s not [investment] the Bain [Capital] way.” It’s not investing in Mexico or China but in Lordstown and Toledo and “made in America,” Biden said.
“They said last night that things aren’t getting better. I guess they don’t know what’s happening in this [Mahoning] Valley.”
Biden characterized the congressional voting record of Paul Ryan as “[giving] absolute clear definition to all those vague commitments Romney has been talking about.” Tax breaks for millionaires, turning Medicare into a voucher system, reducing government oversight of Wall Street: “They’ve already passed all of this in the House of Representatives,” he said.
For the past 14 years, “Paul Ryan voted for every one of the things that caused the catastrophe,” Biden said, citing “not paying for two wars,” an expensive Medicare prescription drug benefit, and tax cuts for the wealthy.
“They talk about how bad things got. How do they think it happened? We went from a surplus and the middle class doing well to, when we came in office, a disaster.”
And now the Romney/Ryan ticket is proposing $500 billion of tax cuts that will go just 120,000 families, Biden said.
“It’s no time to turn back. We have to move forward,” he concluded. “Help us win Ohio and if we win Ohio, we win the election.”
MORE: Biden visits Mocha House, ends trip at Canfield Fair.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.