It may be too early to say "I told ya so"

But the temptation is there nonetheless.

To start explaining why, it's necessary to recognize that the US auto industry is in real trouble. The Detroit Free Press brings the word:

General Motors Corp., for 77 years the world's largest automaker and an icon of American industry, revealed a dire financial outlook Friday that has the company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Ford Motor Co. delivered its own grim forecast - although not immediately as dire as GM's position.

GM's sales were at 25-year lows last month. Through October, Ford's sales were down 18.6%. The auto industry as a whole saw sales down 14.6%.

The troika of the incoming government - Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama - have all responded to the news by loudly declaring their intent to aid the industry. Pelosi and Reid have written jointly to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, urging that he "review the feasibility" of using some of the $700 billion approved by Congress for bailing out banks to instead "provid[e] temporary assistance to the automobile industry."

Obama called the auto industry the "backbone" of US manufacturing, but it's unclear whether he endorses the Pelosi-Reid letter, with The Times (UK) saying "it is believed" he "is supportive of their request" while the New York Times quotes an interview with Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, in which he declined to say one way or the other while insisting Obama is developing his own plan to bail out the industry.

So where's the "told ya so?" It's here:

In October, the Working Poor Families Project released a report on the economic conditions of the working poor, defined as a family of four making less than $42,400 a year. The figure is double the national poverty level of $21,200 for a family four; that ratio is often used as a measure of what constitutes the "working poor," people who are working - often full-time and year-round - but not earning enough to provide a decent life for their family.

How do those families stand?

"The stark reality is too many working American families have been in crisis for many years," Brandon Roberts, director of the Working Poor Families Project, told reporters.

About 42 million working adults and their children are too poor to meet their basic needs of food and shelter, according to Roberts. ...

[These] families often struggle to keep food on the table and to pay rent. Health insurance is out of reach. ...

One-third of U.S. children are in poor families in which parents work full time.

And it's getting worse. Between 2002 and 2006, an additional 350,000 families slipped into the working poor, the report said. Roberts said if the report had included data for 2007-2008, "you'd find these numbers going through the roof." Meanwhile, the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities has also found an increase in the number of poor, adding:

"This marks the first time on record that poverty and the incomes of typical working-age households have worsened despite six consecutive years of economic growth," the centre says.

"The new data show that in terms of poverty and median income, the economic expansion that started at the end of 2001 was the worst on record. The data provide fresh evidence that the gains from the expansion were quite uneven and flowed primarily to high-income households," the centre says.

"Corporate profits, by contrast, grew much more rapidly in the 2001-2007 expansion," the centre says.

There is one, simple, basic reason why this is happening and why it's continuing: Working doesn't pay enough. More than one-fifth of all full-time jobs in the US pay less than $21,000 a year - by Census Bureau standards, not enough to keep a family of four out of poverty. The figure has grown both in absolute numbers and in percentage of the population since 2002. That's why so many low-income adults wind up having to choose between food and health care even though they actually, on average, work about 25% more hours than better-off workers.

So we'll spend hundreds of billions to bail out the banks while a program to directly assist homeowners facing foreclosure gets a pittance. Let GM and Ford start to hack, and politicians fall all over themselves trying to find ways to help out. But literally tens of millions of working adults and their families can be left on the verge of, or actually, economically drowning for years on end and they don't do a damn thing beyond some "looka me, I'm so good to you" tax cuts that will mean diddly to those families.

Even the so-called "economic stimulus packages" get bogged down and held up:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Friday cast doubt on a lame-duck session, saying one might not be held if there’s no deal with the White House on a stimulus. ...

The impetus for a stimulus seemed to grow Friday with a jobs report showing unemployment rising to 6.5 percent. Business groups have also called for a stimulus, which they say should include help for a U.S. automobile industry increasingly in dire straits.

But Hoyer said talks with leaders in the Senate and the White House on a stimulus have failed to make headway.

“We still don’t have any agreement to do that,” Hoyer said. ...

At the same time, the majority leader did say that if legislation is deemed necessary for the auto industry, such legislation in and of itself “could be enough” to warrant a lame-duck.

Which seems a clear measure of what's regarded as important.

In October, a stimulus package of $60 billion lost in the Senate. Dimcrats promised a new, bigger, one, but the size of the package has been shrinking and is now expected to be in the $50-100 billion range, making the economic health of scores of millions of Americans worth maybe about one-tenth the effort as the economic health of the banks.

I expect it's been clear for some time what I think of Congressional Democrats on the whole and Pelosi and Reid in particular. As for Obama, more than three years ago I labeled him as being "among the Senators going the extra mile for Big Business" on an energy bill. Early in October I called him "a moderately liberal but still a corporatist Democrat" and later in the month I said he is "a reliable, accepts-the-common-wisdom, centrist." That latter was specifically in regard to "security" issues, but it fits here just as well.

And all that, dear reader, is why I am so tempted to say "I told you so."