Washington’s Affordable Care Act is broken: It’s increased insurance rates by 49 percent, cost cancer patients their coverage, and deterred employer job creation.
Yet Washington’s pols are convinced they know how to run General Motors.
Thursday it was the Senate’s turn to embarrass GM CEO Mary Barra and her fellow Total Recall cast members. But the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance embarrassed itself instead.
“How in the world, in the aftermath of (the recalls), did Michael Milliken keep his job?” demanded Democratic chairwoman Claire McCaskill about GM’s chief legal counsel. After her Obamacare vote, how does McCaskill still have hers?
“If GM is really serious about changing its culture . . . a place to start is with your legal department,” huffed Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, who, like McCaskill, stands to benefit if their trial-lawyer campaign benefactors win millions in GM recall suits. Talk about a corrupt culture.
The corrupt-GM-culture claim, however, is a ruse. As I have pointed out here, GM hardly had a culture of cover-up, as the pols and their media mouthpieces claim. GM may have produced uncompetitive products like the Chevy Cobalt, but it recalled them when necessary. The Cobalt ignition-switch failure was an aberration — but only because its chief engineer did an end run around company protocol. In the same year as that snafu, GM recalled its best-selling Silverado pickup four times.
We await the senators’ recall of Obamacare.