No one’s perfect, not even the anointed fact checkers who take on the admirable and valuable task of holding public officials accountable for what they say. Sometimes in their zeal for accountability, they get ahead of themselves and the facts. And that seems to be what happened today, when the Washington Post fact checked the President’s remarks last week on the resurgent American auto industry. So let’s take a minute to restore that context before we discuss the specific facts in question.
In the year before the President took office, the American auto industry lost more than 400,000 jobs. Chrysler and GM were facing liquidation.
President Obama had a choice: He could have extended billions of dollars of taxpayer support without requiring any real changes. He also could have allowed the companies to collapse, which, because they are closely linked to networks of suppliers, dealers and other auto companies, would have had a dramatic ripple effect through the industry. Independent forecasts projected that, were the companies to fail, it could have eliminated more than 1 million jobs. Instead he chose a different way: standing behind the American auto industry, but requiring the companies to undergo painful restructuring to become competitive for the future.
So last week – two years after making that difficult decision – the President delivered an accounting of its results to date. In doing so, he pointed out that Chrysler had more than repaid the $8.5 billion that the Obama administration invested in the company. That’s a fact. Chrysler has repaid $10.6 billion in loans, and the Treasury recovered another $560 million by selling its remaining stake in the company to Fiat last week.
Fonte: White House