George Bush should stop stalling on aid to the auto industry.

Time is a wasting.

Millions of jobs are on the line.

The auto industry needs the bailout and it should get it. This is a real economic crisis; you do not ask a bleeding patient if he is deserving of a tourniquet. You just give him one. Later, once he’s somewhat stable, you address the larger issues.

Last week, Republicans in the Senate choked off hope for a Congressional lifeline. Many did so because they view labor unions as the enemy, and the United Auto Workers has been a leader in the labor movement for 75 years now.

Republican senators also said the automakers have mismanaged their operations. This is true. But seeing how Wall Street’s grand dames are no bastions of sound fiscal policy and still received an enormous bailout, such an argument against federal aid doesn’t hold water.

President Bush seems to recognize the need to do something. He told CNN on Tuesday that he feels “a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is a not a huge economic crisis. Look, we're in a crisis now. We're in a huge recession, but I don't want to make it even worse."

He also said he’s “working through the options.”

He should hurry up. And anything less than the $14 billion that the House agreed to would be inadequate to the task.

But none of the bailouts—for Wall Street, for Detroit, for anybody—will do a world of good until years of bad policy and political indifference, aimed at America’s working families, are reversed.

The charge to the new Obama administration will be to move beyond bailouts and toward a new and sustainable economic policy that understands the importance of the working class and the middle class.

The first hurdle in solving Detroit’s woes (and much of the nation’s) is health care. American industries, universities and municipalities can no longer shoulder the responsibility of worker health insurance. The burden of health care should be lifted off of American employers. Placing it there was a bad idea to begin with, and the only entity big enough and rich enough to correct it is the federal government.

Second, it’s absolutely essential that some form of bailout go to the average citizen: We need to help desperate Americans get out of debt and stay in their homes.

Third, the banking industry must end its chokehold on higher education, which is still, barely, one of the best ways Americans can move up the social ladder. For much of the past 30 years, government slashed higher education programs. And instead of grants, students signed up—often unwittingly—for long-term debt. The student loan extravaganza of the past twenty years has taken some of our best and brightest young people and made them permanent members of the debtor class. We must free them.

But if Bush doesn’t rescue the auto industry in the short term, Obama will have such a mess on his hands that he may not be able to implement these sustainable, long-term policies.

Even Bush seems to recognize that.

Dean Bakopoulos, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow and author of the New York Times Notable Book "Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon", was a guest lecturer this fall at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He lives in Mineral Point, WI. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.