Washington — Late in the morning on Thursday, April 30, three officials serving under President Barack Obama got on a telephone conference call with members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers.Steve LaTourette, a former Lake County prosecutor and current Republican lawmaker, was on the other end of that call. So, too, on another phone, was Dennis Kucinich, the Cleveland Democratic congressman who has built a career as a champion of the little guy. Staffers who help inform Sherrod Brown, a Yale graduate and Democratic U.S. senator, were on it. So were staffers for Sen. George Voinovich, a multi-decade Republican policy-maker and attorney.
These are smart people, and they listen carefully. They all took notes on what was said by Larry Summers, Ed Montgomery and Ron Bloom, three of the advisers Obama had tapped to rescue the American auto industry. And what these and other Congress members heard in this private telephone conference was consistent with the message that President Obama publicly made a few minutes later in the White House grand foyer: Chrysler, the storied American automaker, was entering a short, government-assisted Chapter 11 bankruptcy and would merge with Fiat, the Italian car maker.
But this "will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or the communities that depend on it," Obama said.
That seemed straightforward enough, and it mirrored the statements the Congress members had just heard from the top task force officials -- that there would be no plant closings and no layoffs, with only short-term plant idling to restructure and move excess inventory off the lots. It also followed a telephone briefing with reporters little more than an hour earlier, in which a senior administration official was asked about the potential loss of Chrysler "head counts." The administration official, talking with reporters on the condition that he and others not be named, responded that "there are no plans to have any immediate plant closings or major white- or blue-collar head-count reductions."
Maybe someone should have asked what the White House meant by "no plans" and "disrupt."
Congress members say they were blind-sided by the news the next day, May 1, that Chrysler in fact intended to permanently shutter five plants: one each in Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri, and two in Michigan.
The news was embarrassing as well as shocking, since many members, like LaTourette, had issued statements applauding, for instance, the report that no jobs would be cut at the 1,250-worker Twinsburg Stamping Plant. Candice Miller, a Republican congresswoman representing Sterling Heights, Mich., home of a 1,400-worker Chrysler plant, even went on the House floor soon after Obama's announcement, saying it meant, "most importantly, no plant closures or new job losses."
Wrong. Sterling Heights, like Twinsburg, would be sucker-punched the next day with news of a plant closing.
Were Congress members duped? If so, by whom and why? The short answers appear to be yes, by both Chrysler and the White House. Chrysler's top lobbyist, John Bozzella, has since apologized to LaTourette, as a company spokesman confirmed.
What's more difficult to assess is why -- other than the likelihood that the White House and Chrysler both wanted to announce the bankruptcy without an immediate onslaught of squawking from mayors, governors and members of Congress representing Twinsburg; Sterling Heights; Detroit; Kenosha, Wisc.; and Fenton, Mo.
The White House and Chrysler won major headlines across the country with first-day stories of saved jobs. With the exception of the Detroit Free Press, which had the plant closings in its Friday, May 1, editions, most media were unable to review the entire U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing until time for their Saturday editions, one of the worst days of the week for readership.
The bad news was largely limited to press outlets in cities where plants would close.
If it was, in fact, a media strategy, it worked. Despite complaints from a couple of congressmen -- notably, LaTourette and Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan -- the fact that congressmen believe the White House misled them has gained almost no traction in the press.
Then again, it has barely resonated among many rust-belt Democrats, despite their being just as surprised as LaTourette and Ryan. Theirs is a partisan silence, with their opinions known only because this reporter asked...
("Chrysler, Obama take the truth about plant closings for a spin" by Stephen Koff, Plain Dealer Bureau Chief Sunday May 10, 2009)
