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SPECIAL DETROIT FREE PRESS EDITORIAL | A MESSAGE TO WASHINGTON Invest in America DECEMBER 4, 2008 Read Comments(20) Recommend(4)Print this pageE-mail this articleShare this article: DEAR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS:
You don't want an economic disaster on your hands. Not when you could have prevented it. And not in times that are already the worst in a generation.
Why we're sending this message
The Free Press is sending copies of this edition to every member of Congress.
We have chronicled the U.S. auto industry since its birth, as Detroit became the world's Motor City, as cars and trucks changed the American culture and landscape, as assembly line jobs gave rise to the American middle class. Our journalists have reported the automakers' triumphs and exposed their troubles. We know this industry better than anyone.
We also know that while a newspaper needs to inform, there are times when a newspaper needs to speak up for what's right.
We know what automakers and autoworkers mean to this nation. We know what will happen if one of the auto companies is allowed to collapse. We know because this industry has been our story since it started.
And we know that America needs this story to continue.
-- Paul Anger, editor
But that's exactly what you'll have — and more — if one of the three Detroit automakers goes belly-up for lack of a government-backed loan. There will be economic hell to pay — not just in Detroit, but all across America, including in your state, in your district.
The loss of jobs, the devastated retirements, the massive loss of health care coverage, the sharp drop in local tax revenues, the closings of supplier and ancillary businesses — all would be calamitous in the best of times. And these are not that. Just ask the people you represent.
More than 3 million jobs are at stake in the industry. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are threaded in the fabric of businesses in every state across America.
A failure of one or more of the automakers would deepen the country's worst recession in 27 years, and it could take decades to rebuild the nation's industrial base, which will atrophy like an unused limb without the muscle-flexing of Detroit's automakers.
Who will buy the rubber, plastics, copper and computer chips that Americans make? Who will need all the tool and die shop workers, mold makers or software engineers who help drive the small-business economy in so many states?
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