Obama addresses Flint water crisis; cites auto industry comeback

She said that “if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would have been action”.

Obama declared a state of emergency in MI on Saturday, January 16, freeing up federal aid to help Flint, a city of 100,000 at the epicenter of the scare. “Not just auto workers, but the people in communities who depend on you”, Obama said.

The president did not address Governor Snyder’s appeal that Obama reconsider his denial of a federal disaster declaration for Flint. On hand to greet the president were Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan; U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit; and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. “You guys remember ‘Get Shorty,’ right?” “It’s cool driving a minivan”. After counting loan repayments, dividends and stock sales, the federal government recovered $70.5 billion. “He saved my job and my retirement”, welder Randy Gossett of West Bloomfield said after Obama’s speech. The bailout began in 2008 under former President George W. Bush, but the Obama administration placed conditions on the assistance in 2009, including the high-profile removal of GM’s general manager.

A Ford Motor Co plant in MI that Obama visited in January 2015 is ending production of small cars in 2018, the company announced in July, and is expected to start building SUVs to help meet soaring demand.

At the start of Obama’s presidency, GM and Chrysler were teetering on collapse when the administration effectively forced both automakers into bankruptcy, lending them enough to survive. “Because I believe that every American should be proud of what our most iconic industry has done”.

Even three years later as Americans looked back, a slight majority said they disapproved of the bailout, with Republicans opposing it by a 3-to-1 margin, Gallup said.