Major Garrett: I Seem To Recall Obama Telling Us Detroit Was Rebounding

There are a couple of real howlers in here.

Here is Obama on Obama at a gathering Monday night of Organizing for America staff and volunteers: “As we’ve learned, I’ve given some pretty good speeches before. And then things still get stuck here in Washington, which is why I’m going to need your help.”

I don’t know if Obama considers his 2011 Labor Day speech in Detroit “pretty good,” but it is, at minimum, illustrative of the gap between rhetoric and reality there and in other parts of the nation.

So, how about all those Detroit successes you were talking up two short years ago?

Obama referenced "tough choices" made to bail out GM and Fiat-Chrysler and also hailed the birth of a new wave of high-tech employment. "We said American workers could manufacture the best products in the world. So we invested in high-tech manufacturing and we invested in clean energy," he said. "And right now, there's an advanced-battery industry taking root here in Michigan that barely existed before."

The biggest factory in this supposed new trend, Massachusetts-based A123 Systems, had plans to employ 5,900 workers nationwide to build lithium-ion batteries. In Detroit, A123 Systems never employed more than 1,000. The Energy Department awarded A123 Systems a $249 million grant to boost production. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and was still receiving DOE largesse. A judge approved the bankruptcy in 2013.

In other words, the Detroit-area advanced-battery industry Obama said "barely existed before" his 2011 speech now … barely exists.

Obama also saluted the White House decision to make Detroit one of its six pilot cities in the "Strong Cities, Strong Communities" program.

"We're teaming up with everybody—mayors, local officials, you name it—boosting economic development, rebuilding your communities the best way," Obama said. "This is a city where the great American industry has come back to life and the industries of tomorrow are taking root."

The biggest accomplishment of this program in Detroit is the demolition of a public housing project.

Read the whole thing.

posted by JohnE. at 06:42 PM

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