Congress near a Big Three deal, with strings attached
US automakers are likely to get $15 billion in federal loans, but lawmakers insist on industry restructuring.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 8, 2008 edition
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David Cook talks with
Monitor staff writer Gail Chaddock about difficulties facing Detroit's automakers.
Washington - Congress this week returns for a second lame-duck session to help the US auto industry reinvent itself – or at least get through the next few months.
Without billions in government loans, two of the Big Three assert that they won't make it into the new year. News that the US economy lost more than half a million jobs in November is also driving lawmakers toward an agreement that is expected to give General Motors Corp., Chrysler, and, if needed, Ford Motor Co. access to some $15 billion in federal loans.
"We're very close to a deal," said Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan on "Fox News Sunday." While not all Democratic and Republican lawmakers are on board, "there's a consensus that there must be conditions attached," he said.
Stung by the failure of a $700 billion US bailout of the financial industry to quickly show results, especially relief for the ailing housing market, lawmakers want to demand more accountability from any new recipients of government help.
The expansion of a government bailout from Wall Street to the auto industry also moves Congress squarely into the business of setting industrial policy for the nation. The notion that government would pick economic winners and losers gained support among Democrats in the early 1980s, when it appeared that Japan, with its well-developed industrial policy, was America's No. 1 economic rival. The approach later lost its luster as the Japanese economy settled into a deep slump.
Last week, though, US lawmakers appeared anything but reticent to tell auto executives what to do to revive the troubled American industry.
President-elect Obama, moreover, signaled Sunday that strings are likely to be attached to any federal dollars the auto industry gets – and he implied that US officials won't be shy about giving instructions about what needs to change.
"Assistance is conditioned on them making significant adjustments," Mr. Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press," noting that it is not an option to allow the American auto companies to collapse. "They are going to have to restructure and all of the stakeholders are going to have to restructure."
In a key compromise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to allow funds from the Department of Energy's advanced technology program, targeted to help develop more fuel-efficient vehicles, to be redirected to bridging loans for the auto industry – on the condition that those funds be replenished.
The fact that lawmakers are demanding a role in decisions on the auto bailout opens the door to a new role for Congress in industrial policy, say financial analysts.
"If you give them a lot of money and an oversight board to keep them solvent, we are on the path to an industrial policy, and I'm not sure that's a good thing," says Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business. "It's management by committee."
"You can keep them going a while, but sooner or later they are going to have to straighten out their labor costs or they'll keep coming back," he adds.
In two days of hearings last week, lawmakers from both parties discussed the nuts and bolts of plans to help industry, as a condition for government help.
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