A Congressional oversight committee has asked Ron Bloom, White House advisor and former ‘car czar,’ to clarify his response to a question during a recent hearing. Bloom was asked whether he made the statement “I did it all for the unions” back in 2009 in the middle of the auto bailout controversy. He vehemently denied saying it.
The problem is, Bloom’s denial contradicts two otherwise credible sources, including a book written by his car czar predecessor, Steve Rattner, and a published account in the Detroit News. Both claim that Bloom did in fact make the comment in question, though both accounts also agreed that it was made in jest.
Here is video from the June 22 Oversight hearing showing the exchange. Representative clearly disbelieves Bloom’s fervent denials:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPITy7OeAcc[/youtube]
And in this clip, we have a longer discussion that gives context to the Oversight hearing, and the reasons why saying I “did it all for the Unions” would be quite unfunny to a huge swath of the country. It seems not only did Bloom, as the Obama administration’s car czar, take money from bondholders and hand it directly to the Unions — the decision was also made to slash and burn salaried employee benefits while giving strangely deferential benefits to the Unions in the middle of a bankruptcy.
And don’t forget that most of government sponsored car dealership closings were those of ‘republicans’!