Editorial commentary by Steve Bieda as it appeared on DetNews.com
There is nobody in Southeast Michigan who doesn't understand and feel the impact of the domestic auto industry every day. It is visible through its headquarter buildings, factories, supplier firms and dealerships, its museums and historic auto barons' residences, the institutions it has helped give life like the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Michigan Opera Theater and the zoo.
It's present in the memories each of us has of the cars that helped to define various stages of our lives. What was the first car we droveω The first one we ownedω What car did we propose to our wife in, or deliver her to the hospital in for the birth of our first childω What is it that makes over a million of us flock to Woodward Avenue for one wonderful, wacky weekend every summer to watch our lives and our parents' lives cruise byω
Southeast Michigan knows the domestic auto industry because in so many ways Southeast Michigan IS the domestic auto industry. That's why MotorCities National Heritage Area, a unit of the National Park Service, is so very proud of the work we do to keep the memories alive through our nearly 1,000 sites, our comprehensive oral history program, our elementary school educational program that reaches more than 200,000 students annually, our 14 stewardship communities that tell their own local automotive stories. We are the stewards of all the great stories of the industry's heritage and of the labor force that has propelled it for 100 years, and we delight in our role.
The automobile represents America's core spirit, the ability to go where we want, when we want, to cruise the country's legendary wide open spaces or to edge slowly along, bumper-to-bumper, radios blaring, through congested highways or crowded city streets as we move from place to place.
The domestic auto industry has taken its lumps in recent years as competition from abroad has intensified and domestic sales have plunged. While it has done many things right, it hasn't always reacted quickly or smartly enough to the changing world. It needs to do more, much more, faster. It needs to fix what's broken and capitalize on what's working. It needs to rekindle the spark and passion long identified with "the car business" and re-create the once prevalent American "love affair" with their cars.
One out of 10 jobs is tied to the industry, 13 million nationwide. As the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers succinctly puts it, "Autos create jobs, jobs, jobs."
Three million of them would be lost within a year if the domestic manufacturers fail. (Four hundred thousand auto jobs have been lost to restructuring in Michigan alone since 2000.) Nearly $400 billion of personal income and $160 billion in tax revenues would go along with those jobs at a time when our nation can ill afford to lose either.
And what about the hit to our national psyche if we allow our major industry to failω Ours is the industry that spawned the middle class, created the Arsenal of Democracy that enabled victory in "the Great War" and produced the cars that became the worldwide symbol of America's freedom and its independent, fun loving spirit.
So we have reason to be proud. And we have reason for concern. As the keeper of the memories and the teller of the stories, MotorCities National Heritage Area urges Congress to recognize that the auto industry, our industry, means so much to so many and is on the precipice of developing the state-of-the-art alternative energy and green vehicles the market needs now.
It just needs the OK in the form of a loan, not a bailout, from Congress.
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