Lansing, Michigan's Democratic Mayor Virg Bernero said on Tuesday evening that President Obama should get the credit for his state's recovery. "We're fresh off the auto rescue, and we know who is responsible for that, and that's Barack Obama," said Bernero, speaking on PoliticsNation. "What's going right in Michigan really has to be credited to President Barack Obama, because manufacturing is leading Michigan's recovery. ... If it hadn't been for Barack Obama and his plan to rescue the auto industry, we wouldn't be on the map economically."
Mayor Bernero was responding to Michigan's Republican governor Rick Snyder's remarks about the auto bailout to the New York Times in November of last year. Snyder said: “I would have had some differences on how they did it, but I’m not going to second-guess it. The more important thing is the results. And the auto industry is doing very well today.”
Snyder, who defeated Bernero in Michigan's 2010 gubernatorial election, appeared earlier that day at a Mitt Romney campaign event.
Romney wrote an infamous op-ed for the New York Times in November 2008 called "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," in which he argued that the auto bailout would kill the Michigan's automotive industry. "Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check," Romney wrote.
"If we had followed Romney's advice and let them go bankrupt, we would have have been wiped off the map," Bernero said on Tuesday. "We would be in a depression, not a recession."