Obama pledges commitment to auto industry if elected

The leading Democratic candidate for U.S. president, Barack Obama, has promised he won't neglect Detroit the way President Bush has. The car industry has had an especially rough time through the first six months of 2008, and although the future may not prove to be as dire as some had predicted, there will still be a long road to recovery.

While making his promise to be attentive to Detroit's needs and concerns because of the importance of the automobile industry to the U.S. economy, Obama said he wouldn't wait six years to meet with industry officials, like Bush had, reports The Detroit News.

In fact, Bush met with Detroit's Big Three in April 2003, only 27 months after taking office - an admittedly long time, but not six years. Obama's miscalculation was likely based on Bush's notorious refusal to meet with industry leaders for the first six months of 2006.

Along with his promise to meet with Detroit's leadership on a more regular basis, Obama reaffirmed his promise of $150 billion in green industry funding over the next decade, a project which includes the auto industry and many of its workers. That plan would dwarf a recent commitment of $30 million by the U.S. Department of Energy to helping the industry produce the next-generation technologies necessary to build a plug-in hybrid.