The head of the Democratic National Committee made a bizarre, contradictory statement not long ago in defense of the improper federal bailouts to some U.S. car companies in 2009.
Criticizing Republicans who opposed the bailouts, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., told a group of reporters, “If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars; they would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes.”
But what Wasserman Schultz did not mention was that she herself drives a Japanese automobile, a 2010 Infiniti. Its parent company is Nissan. The license plate even proudly bears her initials, The Hill newspaper reported.
She also failed to mention that many so-called “foreign” cars are actually manufactured in the United States. We need look no further than Chattanooga’s own billion-dollar-plus Volkswagen plant to realize that. Volkswagen may be based in Germany, but it is building its Passats right here, employing thousands of area workers in high-paying positions and adding immensely to our local economic growth.
We’re not even certain exactly where Wasserman Schultz’s “foreign” Infiniti was built. Japan-based Nissan has a number of manufacturing plants in the United States, too, including two here in Tennessee — one in Smyrna and one in Decherd.