LORDSTOWN, Ohio – State Treasurer Josh Mandel decried the 2008 bailout of Wall Street and the banking industry, but declined to say whether he similarly opposed the use of federal funds to support the bankruptcy reorganization of General Motors as he campaigned at a company in the shadow of the Lordstown plant where the Chevrolet Cruze is built.
During the Republican candidate's visit to Con-Way Freight, a trucking company here, Mandel repeatedly expressed his support for the manufacturing and transportation industries, which he described as the “backbone of the economy here in the state and country,” and specifically in the Mahoning Valley. The Lordstown event and a subsequent stop in Youngstown were identified as part of Mandel's “Jobs Tour.”
As he discussed examples of wasteful government spending with workers, Mandel, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, pointed to the use of federal funds to help the financial industry in 2008 -- as well as for aid to nations like Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was found and killed over a year ago near its “West Point academy,” as he described the location -- as a reason why the United States doesn’t have the money for infrastructure projects,.
“Why the heck is the federal government taking our tax dollars and using [the money] to bail out Wall Street banks so we don’t have enough money to build roads and bridges here?” he questioned. “Maybe one of the reasons is they’re sending it to places like Pakistan and they’re sending it to places like Wall Street.”
Interviewed following his tour and talk with workers, Mandel said it was wrong to “redistribute tax dollars from hard-working Ohio families to go bail out Wall Street banks.”
Funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, established through legislation enacted in the final months of the administration of President George W. Bush to shore up the financial services sector, were also used to assist GM and Chrysler through their federally managed restructuring. Both automakers, hard hit by the Great Recession, teetered on the brink of collapse and private-sector financing was unavailable.
Asked whether he supported using the federal funds to aid GM, which now is enjoying success with the Chevrolet Cruze built at the Lordstown plant, Mandel reiterated his opposition to using federal funds to “bail out Wall Street banks” using tax dollars.
“Moving forward as a United States senator, I’ll do everything I can to help restore the manufacturing environment and base we have here in the Mahoning Valley and throughout the state,” he said. “We’ve got this great tradition and history of strong manufacturing, and leaders at all levels of government should be doing everything they can to make regulations more common sense and make taxes lower so that we can create middle class, blue-collar jobs.”
Asked again whether federal funds should have been used to help the auto manufacturers survive, Mandel repeated his stance that it was wrong to bail out Wall Street banks. “I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback and cast imaginary votes on a variety of pieces of legislation but I can tell you that I think it’s wrong to bail out Wall Street banks with people’s hard-earned dollars,” he remarked.
A U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served two tours in Iraq, Mandel was elected state treasurer in 2010. He frequently referenced his military background during his talk with management and workers at Con-Way, and also emphasized his support for reinstating shop classes in public schools. He pointed out that none of his grandparents went to college and referenced a report that said 75% of Ohioans lack a college degree, which he said is “relatively on par” with the rest of the nation.
“One of the things I’ve been talking about, and people keep attacking me for but I keep saying it over and over again, is there’s nothing wrong with working a job that doesn’t require college, that if young people don’t want to go to college in this country that’s OK,” he said. “But we’ve got to make sure they’re trained.” The country is facing a shortage of welders as the baby boomers retire, he noted.
The best thing that can be done to help create jobs in the country is “get Washington the heck out of the way,” he said. “The overregulation and the high taxation coming out of Washington kills jobs in our state,” he added.
Mandel also criticized the nation’s excessive debt. Of the $15.6 trillion the United States owes its lenders – the U.S. economy is $15 trillion – China holds about $1 trillion. “In my mind that’s fiscally irresponsible,” he said.
Following the Con-Way event, Mandel traveled to City Machine Technologies in Youngstown for a speech to the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ Youngtown Area Action Council. Although the Mandel campaign sent out an advisory that identified the event as a media availability, an NFIB representative said the meeting was closed and asked a Business Journal reporter to leave. A tour of CMT with Mandel and NFIB members was open to the media.
Attracting new talent is probably the key issue facing CMT’s business, said Michael Kovach, CMT’s president, following the tour. “There’s a lot of gray hairs on our workforce floor,” he remarked. Mandel’s remarks regarding the return of shop classes to schools “really resonated with me,” he said.
“I’ve been an advocate for that for years. For too much time, the skills of using the hands have been neglected,” Kovach agreed. He also said he supported Mandel’s position on getting the nation’s fiscal house in order. “We can’t keep borrowing money from China and just keep kicking that can down the road.”
Kovach said young people need to be taught “how this country works, how it was founded, the principles it was founded on” and the role they have to play to “continue the legacy. We’ve had some missteps along the way both in education and in our investments and in the money we’ve spent and how we take care of people,” he said. “It’s been too easy to just be on the dole.”
A spokesman for Brown’s re-election campaign, which earlier in the day sent an email criticizing Mandel for not supporting the auto bailout, blasted Mandel for his failure to address the issue.
Nearly 850,000 jobs are related to the auto industry in Ohio and Mandel “very clearly wouldn’t have supported the auto rescue,” said Brown spokesman Justin Barasky. “The fact that he’s unwilling to take a stand and either tell the truth and or admit he was wrong says a lot about what kind of senator he would be.”
Barasky denied that Mandel's political opponents have attacked him for his support for skilled trades training, but rather for his refusal to support Brown’s bill to prevent interest rates from doubling on Safford student loans, which can be used at the technical and vocational schools. “Sherrod never said you have to get a college degree,” he said.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.