What's Good For General Motors Is Good For The USA... Still?

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Even before GM started running the above ad about having paid back their TARP loans, a knock-down, drag-out fight was raging between the forces that want America to fail-- primarily Republicans-- and those who would like to, at minimum, clean up the mess that eight years of Republican rule left in its wake. The first salvo was an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal by Ed Whitacre, CEO of General Motors, claiming that GM had paid back all the money it had borrowed plus interest.

Today, General Motors is announcing that it has made a payment of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada. We're paying back-- in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule-- loans made to help fund the new GM.

Our ability to pay back these loans less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy is a sign that our plan for building a new GM is working. It is also an important step toward eventually reducing the amount of equity the governments of the U.S., Canada and Ontario hold in our company. Combined, these governments hold a majority of GM's equity, and we want citizens to know how their governments' money is being put to work.

Following the initial crisis and the bankruptcy of the old GM last year, a new GM has emerged as a leaner, stronger company. We have eight new members on our 13-member board of directors. Twelve of the top 13 senior leaders are new to GM (from places outside the industry such as Microsoft and AT&T) or in new jobs at the company. You can feel a renewed energy and commitment at GM. Our new vehicles are generating sales, and these sales are allowing us to make investments and create jobs.

Good news like this, unchallenged, would undermine the entire Republican Party midterm election scheme to confuse voters into thinking Obama and the Democrats, raher than Bush and the Republicans and their years and years of wrong-headed economic policies, are at the root of their discontent. Chuck Grassley, technically still among the living, was fast to start braying that Whitacre was just shuffling TARP money from one account to another. The Republican Party's propaganda unit, its echo chamber led by Fox and the Heritage Foundation, started thundering away that the sky was falling. "Real progress," whined the reactionaries, "will be made when the government turns GM back to the private sector." They also whined that government policy has been favoring workers and retired people over bondholders and shareholders.

The President (whose address from Saturday you can watch below) claims that signs of recovery at GM and Chrysler are part of an overall recovery that his policies are bringing to the devastated economy.

"Many believed this was a fool's errand. Many feared we would be throwing good money after bad: that taxpayers would lose most of their investment and that these companies would soon fail regardless," Obama said. "But one year later, the outlook is very different. In fact, the industry is recovering at a pace few thought possible."

In addition to GM's decision to pay back $5.8 billion in government loans -- albeit with cash from a government-funded account-- and Chrysler's posting of an operating profit for the first quarter, Obama touted the ending of an aid program for suppliers and the repayment of aid by Chrysler Financial as signs of improvement.

"It won't be too long before the stock the Treasury is holding in GM can be sold, helping to reimburse the American people for their investment," Obama said, adding, "As I've said many times, I did not run for president to get into the auto business or the banking business. As essential as it was that we got in, I'm glad to see that we're getting out."

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress that the estimated losses from the auto industry bailout had shrunk to $28 billion, of the roughly $85 billion spent. Last year, Treasury estimated it could lose $30 billion on the industry aid.

As for the ads... anyone know if Fox is running them?