It’s not much of a shock that lies are popping up in the Republican presidential nomination race. But in Michigan, Mitt Romney is telling one whopper of lie about the UAW, the auto bailout that saved two of the nation’s Big 3 car manufacturers and President Obama.

In a nutshell, Romney says Obama should have let Chrysler and GM go bankrupt—that should win him a lot of votes in Michigan today—and Obama instead “gave the companies to the UAW.”

Not at all true, according to PolitiFact.Com’s Truth-O Meter. The UAW does not own any stock in either company. The independent health care trust for UAW beneficiaries did receive stock in Chrysler and GM as part of the auto industry rescue. But as Politifact.com says:

What tips Romney’s claim even further from reality is the fact that the union itself does not own any GM or Chrysler stock. The trust that manages health benefits for retirees is the stockholder, and it is independent from the UAW. It is not a majority shareholder in either company, nor does it have a vote on the board. All the experts we talked to agreed that Romney’s statement is just flat wrong. Our ruling: False.

This morning, Obama answered back, speaking to the UAW legislative conference in Washington D.C., the President said there were two choices as the economy was in a free fall in early 2009 and as the “heartbeat of American manufacturing was flat lining.” The government could invest in the auto rescue or:

The other option we had was to do nothing, and allow these companies to fail. In fact, some politicians said we should. Some even said we should “let Detroit go bankrupt.”... And you know why I knew this rescue would succeed? It wasn’t because of anything the government did. It wasn’t just because of anything management did. It was because I believed in you. I placed my bet on American workers. And I’d make that same bet again any day of the week. Because three years later, that bet is paying off for America. Three years later, the American auto industry is back.