SAGINAW COUNTY -- UAW President Bob King did not hold back.  “They are destroying America,” he said of both state and national Republicans, while giving the keynote remarks at a Saginaw County Democratic Party fundraiser Friday night. 

He ripped Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to tax pensions and reign in the collective bargaining process. 

“Governor Snyder and the Republicans, they don’t care about working people,” King said.   “I get angry when he talks about fair, shared sacrifice.  What sacrifice is he making?”

King was also critical of the federal budget proposals working through the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, led by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee. 

“All they want to do is give more tax breaks to the rich and the corporations,” he said, instead of funding the nation’s aging infrastructure and supporting high-tech projects such as a national clean-energy electric power grid. 

Sleeping on the job

King said Democrats only have themselves to blame for staggering political losses in November of 2010; a time when Republicans made record gains in the U.S. House.   He vowed not to be defeated in 2012. 

“When we rebuild that people power, to re-elect President Obama and to re-elect Senator (Debbie) Stabenow, we have to be committed,” he said. However polls show an American electorate growing increasingly weary of high debt levels, federal spending and a lack of job growth or expansion of the national economy under Obama.  King said not to count his side out. 

“As bad as the elections were for us in 2010, people see the extremism of the Republican Party,” he said.  “People don’t want extremists running the government.”

King was elected UAW president in June of 2010.