Friday, November 5, 2004 Detroit has big stake in what happens next in nation's capital
http://www.detnews.com/2004/insiders/0411/07/c01-326317.htm By Daniel Howes / The Detroit News Daniel Howes If you buy conventional political wisdom, a second Bush Administration and stronger Republican control of Congress should be good for Detroit's automakers. Congress and the White House could deliver medical malpractice reform, now that the Republicans have picked up four Senate seats and the two most prominent Senate shills for plaintiffs lawyers - Carolina senators Fritz Hollings and John Edwards - are retired. They could craft an energy bill that lowers the cost of energy and stabilizes oil prices, twin concerns that are pushing the cost of doing business higher and disposable incomes for the rest of us lower. They could use President Bush's promised tax-code reforms to shape tax incentives that would encourage job-creating research and development investment in the United States - not foreign countries. They could craft tax policy that rewards consumers for buying the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that increasingly will be appearing in American showrooms. Fiscal conservatives won't like federal subsidies for private consumer products, but Detroit can't pin its future only on big trucks and SUVs. They could target the skyrocketing cost of health-care, a $10 billion per year burden on Detroit that's only getting heavier, by pushing legislation that encourages the use of sophisticated information technology to manage electronic prescribing of drugs and electronic medical record-keeping, for example. Or the Republicans controlling the White House and the Congress could spend the next two years bullying the opposition and beating their collective chests while doing victory laps up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Possessing power is necessary for delivering results, but it isn't sufficient without an agenda and action. The party that's supposed to be an auto industry friend, even if it necessarily one all the time, could actually help improve the competitiveness of American automakers and slow the erosion of American manufacturing jobs without easing fuel-economy and environmental regulations. Increased majorities on both houses of Congress should make it easier to move legislation, but without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Republicans can't do it alone. For Detroit, the worst thing to come from Tuesday's national spanking of the Democratic Party would be nothing. Before the election, there was quiet talk among industry lobbyists in Washington that a Kerry Administration might, in fact, be more amenable to tortured industry pleas for some kind of federal answer to its health-care burden. That would be debatable if it wasn't now moot. Aside from the United Auto Workers policy shop and the coterie of Big Three retirees perpetually worried about losing their health-care bennies, Tuesday's results effectively kill any serious discussion about how and whether a national health-care solution would ease some of Detroit's problems. There are other answers. The challenge will be getting Republicans off the victory parade and back to work. Daniel Howes's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106 or at [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on NewsTalk 760-WJR.
