Wasn't it just 48 hours ago that we heard the lame duck session of Congress would ditch an economic stimulus package in favor of trying to provide $25 billion dollars to help the crippled auto industry? Now there's news the car bailout may not happen. It seems Republicans in the Senate have some problems with helping the so-called Big Three. Far be it from me to agree with them, but GM, Ford, and Chrysler seem to be suffering from the same corporate brain lock we see in the financial sector. They just don't get it.
How else to explain their hesitance, even as they have their hands out, to pledge to produce more fuel efficient vehicles? This resistance gives fuel (no pun intended) to lawmakers who say problems in Detroit began well before the current economic meltdown. Fact is, American carmakers have been fighting off efforts to produce vehicles with better gas mileage for decades. They say they need bailout money not to retool their factories, but to deal with rising labor and pension costs.
As a person who believes in the value of unions and workers, it's hard to sit back and say let the Big Three fend for themselves. That usually means massive layoffs and plant closings. If any of the carmakers goes bankrupt, things will be even worse. On top of that, Republicans in Congress seem willing to gut the fuel efficiency requirements in order to expedite the $25 billion dollar loans currently in the pipeline. Yet there are still fundamental questions that require answers.
Why can't the auto industry commit to making more fuel efficient vehicles? Is there something in their DNA that makes them deaf to what the American people are telling them with their pocketbooks? Do they marvel at the sight of gas guzzling SUVs sitting in car lots, unsold and unwanted? It's like a drowning man refusing a life jacket because he doesn't like the color.
Auto industry executives will be coming, hat in hand, to Capitol Hill next week. That is, if there's a lame duck session of Congress to lobby. If economic stimulus and a car bailout are both off the table, why bother?
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I have one problem with this Congress doing bail-outs: they pass laws before they know enough about what's in them and without getting good stuff for us, the little folks. Rushing legislation through so often seems to get the folks back home the "short end of the stick" and then we're stuck with what they passed in haste and our ($)waste.
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