Many people told President Barack Obama saving the auto industry was too bold, too risky, Vice President Joe Biden told the delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) tonight. President Obama met with policy and economic experts, members of Congress and other advisers to decide how to handle the imminent bankruptcy of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009. Despite the opposition, the president knew what a bankruptcy would mean to the auto industry workers and the American people. "He understood something they didn’t. He understood that this wasn’t just about cars. It was about the Americans who built those cars and the America they built."
 
Illustrating how work truly does connect us all, Biden continued:

In those meetings, I often thought about my dad. My dad was an automobile man. He would have been one of those guys—all the way down the line—not in the factory—not along the supply chain—but one of those guys selling American cars to the American people. I thought about what this crisis would have meant for the mechanics, the secretaries, the sales people who he managed. And I know for certain, that if my dad were here today, he would be fighting for this president, who fought to save all those jobs, his job, and the jobs of all the people he cared about. He would respect Barack Obama for having the guts to stand up for the automobile industry, when others walked away.

President Obama, addressing the delegates, reminded us tonight what makes America so great: We make things, and we make them well. The Obama administration has a plan to create even more good manufacturing jobs, on top of the more than half a million that were created during the past two and a half years.

Obama said:

We're making things again. 

I've met workers in Detroit and Toledo who feared they'd never build another American car. Today, they can't build them fast enough, because we reinvented a dying auto industry that's back on top of the world.   

I've worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America—not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products.  Because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.   

Mitt Romney, Biden reminded the delegates, would "let Detroit go bankrupt." Romney believes that in the global economy, "it doesn’t much matter where American companies put their money or where they create jobs."

Biden added:

I found it fascinating last week—when Gov. Romney said, that as president, he’d take a jobs tour. Well with all his support for outsourcing—it’s going to have to be a foreign trip....Look, President Obama knows that creating jobs in America—keeping jobs in America—and bringing jobs back to America—is what being president is all about.

The president asked the country in his speech to choose a path to prosperity for all working people, not just the richest 1%, who have already received more than enough tax cuts and loopholes. We can choose a future where the United States is a manufacturing powerhouse again. We can choose a future where we invest in our infrastructure and education for our children.

President Obama said:

And now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America. We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years. You can make that happen. You can choose that future.

Read President Obama's entire DNC speech.