No apologies for auto bailout opposition: 'Are you kidding me?'

House Speaker John Boehner angrily reached his limit with the tea party and other ultraconservative groups this past week, lambasting them for leading congressional Republicans off the cliff on the ill-fated government shutdown in October and ridiculing them for stridently opposing the bipartisan budget compromise that is headed for final approval in the Senate.

Boehner lashed back in two consecutive press conferences, but the subject was a modest budget bill that will establish a minor tweak in fiscal policy and ignore long-term deficit trends.

In contrast, Boehner could have met with reporters to discuss a far more substantive topic – the end of the federal rescue program for the automakers and the spectacular success of an iconic American industry afforded by that temporary bailout.

Even if you set aside the bulging sales and profits posted repeatedly by General Motors and Chrysler since the federal assistance arrived in 2008-09, or the hundreds of thousands of new jobs created, the final figures show that, after calculating all the savings that were realized in unemployment benefits and other government assistance by avoiding massive layoffs, the federal funds provided to GM and Chrysler produced a $95 billion net gain for U.S. taxpayers.

As the Treasury Department sold the last of its GM stock at peak prices on Monday, the Center for Automotive Research released a study that found if the two automakers had failed, the loss of jobs would have been much worse than what was suggested when Congress was dragging its feet on the bailout – 2.6 million jobs eliminated in 2009 and 1.5 million lost in 2010.

CAR projected that the far-reaching ripple effects, with many auto suppliers going belly up, would have inflicted devastating collateral damage. Approximately 90 percent of U.S. employees at Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and BMW would have been laid off for at least a year.

So, in the spirit of congressional truth-telling that grabbed hold of the speaker of the House this past week, here is the Boehner press conference I would have preferred to see (some of the speaker’s words have been altered to satisfy my fanciful scenario):

QUESTION: Mr. Speaker, when the auto bailout was debated in Congress, one GOP House member said that trying to save GM and Chrysler would be “like putting a tourniquet on a dead man.” Several members of Congress said that loans for the Detroit automakers would be “pouring money down the drain” or “down a rat hole.” They were cheered on by conservative groups that …

BOEHNER: “You mean the groups who came out and opposed the auto industry rescue plan before they ever saw it?

“They were using our members, and they were using the American people, for their own goals. (voice rising)

This was ridiculous.”

QUESTION: Now that Chrysler and GM are so successful – and they’ve hired thousands and thousands of additional workers – were those groups such as Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity way off the mark in their criticism?

BOEHNER: “I think they were misleading their followers. I think they were pushing our members in places where they didn’t want to be. And, frankly, I just think that they’ve lost all credibility.”

QUESTION: The CAR study shows that the waves of unemployment if GM and Chrysler were liquidated would have been far worse than anticipated. It would have decimated all the car companies, foreign and domestic. Were the purist conservatives who were advocating a rigid, dog-eat-dog type of capitalism, without regard for auto industry workers, on the verge of orchestrating a catastrophic mistake?

BOEHNER: “You know, they pushed us into this fight … This wasn’t the strategy I had in mind. But if you recall, the day when we realized that GM and Chrysler would thrive and pay back their loans ahead of time one of these groups stood up and said, ‘Well, we were never sure that blocking the bailout was a good idea.’

(voice rising to a bellow) Are you kidding me?”

QUESTION: In stubbornly sticking to their ideology, there were quite a number of senators and House members who almost pushed some states into dire circumstances – Depression level unemployment, double-digit jobless rates for several years. Think of places like Michigan, and especially the Detroit area, manufacturing centers like Macomb County …

BOEHNER: “There just comes a point where some people step over the line. When you criticize something and you have no idea what you’re criticizing, it undermines your credibility.”

QUESTION: At the time, some critics said that the bridge loans were socialism, that the funding was “postponing the inevitable.” Were they putting abstract economic principles above practical job-saving ideas and corporate revivals?

BOEHNER: “Well, I wasn’t the speaker at the time… When criticism was coming, frankly, it should have been my job and my obligation to stand up for conservatives here in Congress who realize we can’t be so doctrinaire as to allow one of our largest industries to fold.

“As it turns out, the so-called bailout took giant steps in the right direction. Listen, if you are for good-paying manufacturing jobs in this country, you should have been for the auto bailout.”

QUESTION: Beyond all the jobs that were saved and the $95 billion-net that the federal government saved, the Big Three automakers are more competitive than at any time in the past quarter century. They have been pumping out a lot of critically acclaimed new models lately. Without the federal loans, there would not be a new Chevy Stingray, no retro Camaro, no 50th anniversary Mustang, no revamped Dodge Charger. Do you think that the congressional Republicans who tried to stop the bailout, especially those Southern Senators who cavalierly predicted doom, should apologize for being so wrong?

BOEHNER: (bellowing)“Again, Are You Kidding Me? Of course!”