Janesville Remarks Spark Firestorm

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan suggested at the party's national convention on Wednesday that President Barack Obama was to blame for closing a General Motors Co. assembly plant in Janesville, Wis., in December 2008 while George W. Bush was still president.

United Auto Workers President Bob King calls Ryan's remarks "ludicrous." About 100 workers did continue to work at the facility until April 2009 to complete a pickup truck order for Isuzu.

Ryan's speech spawned a flood of fact-checking stories about various claims about the "Janesville Debate," as National Public Radio called it. Here are some of the claims and established facts:

Obama visited the factory in February 2008 and told workers there that if the government supported GM in retooling the big-SUV facility to make fuel-efficient vehicles, "this plant will be here for another hundred years."

In October, he said that as president he would "lead an effort to retool plants" like the one in Janesville so American can build the "cars of tomorrow" and create good-paying jobs.

At a campaign rally on Aug. 16 Ryan alleged that Obama pledged to save the Janesville factory, calling it "one more broken promise." Republicans defend Ryan's comments, noting that the president didn't use the government bailout of GM in 2009 to retool the Wisconsin facility.

Ryan asserted on another occasion that Obama's failure to rein in gasoline prices led to the plant's closing, The Detroit News reports. Pump prices reached their all-time record of $4.11 in July 2008, shortly after GM announced plans to shutter the Janesville facility.

Ryan's stump speech correctly attributes the shutdown of Chrysler's engine plant in Kenosha, Wis., in 2010 and the closings of hundreds of GM and Chrysler dealerships to the company's White House-supervised bankruptcy. He opines the resulting loss of jobs shows Obama's auto bailout was a sham. Several news outlets point out that the rescue kept most of the companies' other U.S. factories and dealerships open.