Automakers To Spin Their Wheels

After it appeared that a compromise deal was reached by some key Senators on providing $25 billion in loans to the auto companies, as it turned out that deal was based on taking away the money guaranteed to them in exchange for making fuel-efficient cars, which is simply a bad trade-off, so the Democratic leadership scuttled it, and put off a final vote until GM, Ford and Chrysler come up with a business plan for success.

Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable.

"Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol.

She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan [...]

The chief executives of the Big Three automakers appealed personally to lawmakers for the loans this week, and warned that their industry might collapse without them. In testimony, they said their problem was that credit was unavailable, and not that they were manufacturing products that consumers had turned their backs on.

But whatever support they found sagged when it became known that each of them had flown into Washington aboard multimillion dollar corporate jets. Reid observed that was "difficult to explain" to taxpayers in his hometown of Searchlight, Nev.

Yeah, that was just "horrible PR 101." Not only flying corporate jets on the short hop from Detroit to Washington, but all flying SEPARATELY from what was probably the same airport.

These are definitely scary times in Michigan, so they'd better get someone extremely smart to write those business plans. And line one should say "OK, after we fire all of our current executives..."