U.S. automaker Chrysler, which just three years ago received a rescue from the federal government, made $1.7 billion last year, and anticipates making more than $2 billion this year due to strengthening American demand for autos, according to information released today by the company. And workers will be receiving some of the spoils:

All eligible Chrysler Group LLC’s salaried and hourly workers will receive either a performance bonus or a profit-sharing check, according to CEO and chairman Sergio Marchionne. [...]

In the email, Marchionne did not release how much the employees would receive. But based on Chrysler’s current contract with the United Auto Workers, eligible union members should receive profit sharing checks of about $2,250.

Conservatives of all stripes scoffed at the auto bailout, claiming that it would be the death knell of the auto industry (or even American capitalism). But three years later, with America’s auto companies thriving and investing in new American operations, the governments actions have been largely vindicated. This chart shows how the rescue of the auto industry turned sweeping job losses into job gains:

Ford also released its earnings report this week, making $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter and $5.7 billion for the year.

Chrysler workers are off today in order to cast their Election Day ballots, which prompted Politico to claim “the car company that attacked Mitt Romney for falsely claiming it was moving operations overseas is going a step further, ostensibly for President Obama.”

Chrysler’s CEO did publicly rebuke Mitt Romney after Romney ran ads claiming that the company was moving American jobs to China. However, as Reuters’ auto industry reporter Deepa Seetharaman noted, the Big Three auto companies — General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford — have given their workers Election Day off since 1999:

@edshow @uaw, Election Day has been holiday at all three U.S. automakers due a provision in ’99 UAW contract. That was extended to salaried.

— Deepa Seetharaman (@dseetharaman) November 6, 2012

”It’s not a holiday; it’s a day to show you’re a good American citizen,” said the president of the United Auto Workers at the time the day off was implemented.

Chrysler workers feared for their jobs after Romney ran misleading ads suggesting that their jobs would be sent offshore. In a letter to the Detroit News, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne wrote, “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is the latest Republican to refute one of Mitt Romney’s biggest talking points in the state, as he told CBS Monday morning that Chrysler is adding jobs in Ohio, not shipping them to China as Romney has claimed both on the campaign trail and in radio and television ads:

ANCHOR: And is Jeep creating more jobs in Ohio or are they sending them to China?

KASICH: No. Chrysler has, has — Chrysler is the one automaker that has increased employment.

Watch it:

After Romney’s claims led to auto workers calling their employers because they feared for their jobs, Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchione wrote a letter to the Detroit News refuting Romney. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand,” Marchione wrote. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” He also noted, as Kasich said, that Chrysler has added American jobs since the auto industry rescue: “With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009.”

While some Republicans continue to defend Romney, at least six others have repeatedly contradicted his claims about the auto bailout that saved Chrysler and General Motors.

Mitt Romney’s misleading auto bailout ads that hit Ohio this week touted his plan to help the auto industry, even though no specific plan was mentioned, no plan exists on his web site, and his presidential campaign did not respond to requests from reporters when asked about the plan.

Writing on Romney’s campaign web site, ex-Chrysler chairman and Romney endorser Lee Iacocca has now laid out Romney’s plan to help the auto industry: it’s a massive corporate tax break that will make it easier for businesses to offshore their profits.

When Mitt Romney is president, he will reduce our nation’s corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent – currently the highest combined tax rate in the industrial world – so that American car companies can compete on a level playing field at home and abroad. He will also stop the extra tax automakers are forced to pay when they want to bring home their profits to reinvest in the United States. President Obama could have done this the day he took office since his party controlled both houses of Congress, but he chose not to. [my emphasis]

Steven Rattner, Treasury’s lead adviser during the auto rescue, said on a conference call today that he would “take issue” with the idea that auto companies need tax breaks. “I’m not sure what Lee Iacocca is talking about,” Rattner said. “The least of the industry’s problems has been taxes. When you lose as much money as they lost, you don’t pay taxes and you often don’t pay them for a very long time. That’s not the industry’s problem.”

Romney’s plan, at a cost of more than $1 trillion, wouldn’t help the American economy or auto workers if history is any guide. The amount the U.S. actually collects from corporations is among the lowest in the developed world. And if the U.S. is failing to remain competitive with the rest of the world, its auto companies haven’t noticed: American auto companies are thriving at home.

The plan to eliminate the tax on repatriated profits — those earned overseas and returned to the U.S. — surely won’t help auto workers. George W. Bush’s repatriation tax failed to spark economic and job growth, and many of the companies that lobbied for it ended up cutting jobs and stashing even more money overseas in its wake.

While Romney is falsely attacking Chrysler and General Motors for moving auto jobs to China, his plan for the corporate tax system would make it even easier for them to do so. Romney’s shift to a territorial tax system would add incentives for corporations to outsource jobs and offshore profits, and one study estimates that it would lead to the creation of 800,000 overseas jobs at the expense of American workers.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has received a lot of negative attention for running utterly untrue television ads in Ohio that claim Chrysler is moving all of its Jeep production overseas. But that’s not stopping the candidate from making a made-for-radio version of the advertisement, repeating many of the same blatant falsehoods.

The highly dubious claims in the ad have been widely debunked. Even the CEO of Chrysler was forced to clarify any confusion wrought by the ads, writing in an email to employees, “Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China… It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” But Romney, whose campaign has had a penchant for disregarding the truth when it’s politically inconvenient, is running the ads anyway — even going so far as to suggest the auto rescue helped China:

Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry, but for who? Ohio, or China? Under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they’re planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China. And now comes word that Chrysler plans to start making Jeeps in — you guessed it — China. What happened to the promises made to auto workers in Toledo and throughout Ohio, the same hardworking men and women who were told Obama’s auto bailout would help them? Mitt Romney grew up in the auto industry… Mitt Romney: He’ll stand up for the auto industry. In Ohio, not China.

The three major auto companies — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — had significant increases in sales after the auto rescue, and it’s estimated that 1.3 million jobs were saved from the measure. Even prominent Republicans have contradicted Romney’s claims regarding the rescue.

The ad’s misleading claims have already had some negative consequences for Romney: A group of auto workers called their union heads in panic after hearing the claims, fearing that they’d been fired without knowing it.

Mitt Romney, attempting to bolster his case to Ohio voters, misinterpreted a story and passed on an outright lie at a rally in the swing state yesterday. Reacting to a Bloomberg News story about auto manufacturer Chrysler’s plans to open a plant in China, Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio that the company was “thinking of moving all production to China,” and that he would prevent such action by fighting for “every good job in America”:

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”

The Bloomberg News story, however, doesn’t say that Chrysler plans to move “all production to China.” Instead, it says that Fiat, which now owns Chrysler, is planning to open Chinese factories where it will make one of its most popular lines, Jeep, for Chinese consumers. Chrysler isn’t planning to shift production away from the United States. Instead, it will add factories in China to keep up with the nation’s growing demand for automobiles:

Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.

“That he would take an article that just described a global expansion and not a shift in jobs and use it to try to get Ohio votes, or to scare people into voting for him, is just another example of why you can’t trust this man,” former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on a conference call today.

Romney has often struggled with facts about the auto industry. Though he now claims the auto bailout was his idea, his plan to let the private sector finance the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors was “reckless” and “pure fantasy,” according to auto industry insiders. By some estimates, it could have cost more than 1 million American jobs.