Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Here's the one chart you can show to any liberal propagandist who claims GM paid off its debt to taxpayers

When the president or any other propagandist tries to claim that GM and Chrysler have made the American taxpayer whole, wave this in their face.

In a February 28 speech, President Obama referred to this expenditure of $80 billion as a bet on the American worker, and added: “Now, three years later . . . that bet is paying off, not just paying off for you, it’s paying off for America.” His implication that the bailout is succeeding-that it will not ultimately be a loss for taxpayers-is a constant theme of Democrats.


The [accompanying] chart, drawn from information released by the Treasury, shows the current status of the financial assistance that the automotive industry has received through TARP. Out of the total $80 billion that has been paid out, only $35 billion has been repaid, some $7 billion has been written off, and $37 billion is still outstanding. That is, 9 percent of the original amount has already been lost, and close to half is still in limbo.

The latest Congressional Budget Office report estimates that the total cost of the bailout will end up being $20 billion. The biggest culprit will be GM, since the Treasury has no remaining investment in Chrysler, having sold its shares in July 2011.

The automakers may be profitable now, but only because we are not counting the taxpayer losses against the profits. If the president continues to avoid this simple math, perhaps someone should ask him why he didn’t shower billions on every industry and create millions more jobs.

Repeat:

Close to 10 percent of the "investment" has already been irretrievably lost. And it's questionable we'll ever see the other half of the money.



3 comments:

Reliapundit said...

WHAT ABOUT THE STOCK WE BOUGHT FOR 40 THAT'S ONLY WORTH 20?

Anonymous said...

Nobody ever talks about the billions in tax loss carryforwards that are usually lost in bancrupcy butGm was able to retain there and effectively not have the pay taxes for many years to come

Whitehall said...

Thursday's WSJ has a piece that Chrysler's "deal" shields them against punitive damages for products before 2009.

The trial lawyers must really love that!