… MSNBC’s Countdown has obtained a memo that tells you the real reason:

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

(Emphasis mine)

This isn’t about fixing the Big Three’s business model, or making them more competitive, or any of the other reasons the obstructionist Republicans have been giving for opposing the bridge loan. It’s about smacking down our brothers and sisters in the United Auto Workers, and positioning the GOP to fight against the rest of America’s workers by opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Kind of breathtaking, really, to see national leaders engaging in such cynical political maneuvering when millions of jobs hang in the balance.

Which is why we our executive director, Chris Chafe, describes their agenda as an attack on the American Dream:

The ghost of Herbert Hoover must be whispering in the ears of the Republican minority. The Republican Senate Caucus in an ideological fit threatens our entire economy as well as the hopes of working families with demands to immediately reduce wages and to effectively void the workers’ union contract in the auto industry. Hoover took a Wall Street collapse and turned it into a national calamity that lasted more than a decade. Today’s Republicans seem determined to do the same. Driving down wages in the face of faltering consumption is not a recipe for recovery, but a shortcut to a prolonged crisis. We need policies to promote and expand good jobs, not obstructionism that will destroy the jobs that have been the backbone of the working middle class…

Workers and their unions have been the focus of the Republican attack. Their motivation could not be more obvious, or their agenda more wrongheaded. They simply want to eliminate unions, and are using the proposed government-supported legislation for the auto industry to further their agenda. Unions, however, have been the vehicle for economic growth, economic equity and the American Dream. When the percentage of workers in unions was higher, wage and economic growth accelerated. As the wave of union-busting began its rise in the 1980s, wages stagnated, affordable health benefits declined and pensions disappeared. Today, median family income is lower than in 2000; young workers face real wages that are $2 per hour lower; and income inequality is at its greatest level since the Great Depression.

The Republican attack on the auto workers is an attack on the American Dream for all workers. President Bush and the Senate leadership must take action to end the obstructionism and put the auto industry and our economy on the road to recovery.

UPDATE (11AM): Channeling John Maynard Keynes, John Judis at the New Republic calls the GOP opposition “feather-brained”:

This is not just about automobile companies. If you look at the history of the Great Depression, what tipped that event from a global recession to depression was precisely a series of dumb, craven—or in Keynes’ word, “feather-brained”—moves by politicians blinded by ideology or by narrow self-interest. An interest rate hike here, a balanced budget there, a spending reduction or two, and we went from ten to twenty percent unemployment. Don’t imagine for a moment that the failure to bailout the auto companies isn’t one of those feather-brained moves.

Put it this way. What we have learned from the economics of the Great Depression is that in order to end the spiral of unemployment, government has to throw money at companies and consumers. It should be trying to raise wages, not lower them. The Wall Street bailout was a fiasco, but it was probably better than nothing. And the auto bailout was considerably better thought-out. Now there is a good prospect that two of the Big Three will fail, jeopardizing, perhaps, as many as a million jobs. That’s exactly the kind of thing that Americans should not be doing. But don’t tell that to those great patriots Corker, DeMint, or Shelby. They know better.