".I was never a big fan of the auto bail outs. Therefore, I will not vote for a President who already bailed them out once, and would certainly do it again."

There are about 300 million people in the US. When Bush II took office, there were only about 17 million manufacturing jobs. During the 2001 recession the US lost almost 3 million of those jobs. During the recover, the US continued to loose manufacturing jobs, but at a slower rate. When the 2008 collapse hit, the US lost over 2 million more manufacturing jobs. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtab... During the aftermath of the 2008 Collapse, the country's manufacturing employment fell to 11.5 million jobs even with the auto bail out. Absent the auto bail out, another million jobs would have been lost.

One other consideration... If you look at the federal budget in terms of spending, state by state, there are subsidized states and donor states. The subsidized states take in more in federal spending than the send to the federal government in taxes and fees. The donor states send more to the federal government than federal money gets received into their states. The donor states not only pay for the subsidies the subsidized state receive, they pay for all of the spending outside of US borders such as overseas military. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/winners-and-losers-... There are some donor states such as Connecticut that don't have a lot of manufacturing but are strong net donors on a percentage basis. Most of the states like this are small. In fact it is the large manufacturing states (NY, CA, the upper Midwest) the finance the entire federal budget.

During the collapse, the job loss did not hit the country evenly. The agricultural sector did OK as people still tended to eat while they put off buying things like new cars. In fact, in states like Nebraska, you would hardly know anything was wrong. However the collapse hit the manufacturing states hard. The result was that the federal budget got hit hard as the states that actually pay to run the federal government (and to subsidize the subsidy states) started sending in much less.

There are many more subsidy states than donor states and only a hand full of big donor states. In that sense, the federal budget is sort of like a train, there are a few engines in front pulling the train along and a bunch baggage cars in back being pulled along. If you're sitting in the back in some highly subsidized red state car, you may think that what goes on in Michigan or Ohio has nothing to do with you. In truth, like any train, if an engine suddenly goes off line, that's a big problem. If your train was already having issues, borrowing money to keep itself moving forward, having a top contributor suddenly become one of the subsidy states is a disaster.

The US buys things from overseas. We need to sell things back in order to pay for what we buy and we certainly don't need to suddenly be buying more. Whether you were/are a fan of the auto bail outs or not there was really no choice about them. Even with the auto bail outs, in a country of 300 Million people, the US has only 12 million manufacturing jobs.

I grew up in a US that was rich because it made things and sold them around the world. Under Bush II the US lost manufacturing jobs virtually every month, recession or not. Under Obama, US manufacturing employment is growing for the first time in almost a decade. Ther have been bad bets like Solyndra, but also an extremely good bet on the existing US auto industry. The results speak for themselves.

V.