Your boy Barney...
news.yahoo.com
Hill leader says jobs report argues for car rescue
WASHINGTON – A key House committee chairman said Friday that new bleak unemployment figures make helping the beleaguered domestic auto industry even more urgent and cautioned colleagues that doing nothing "would be a disaster."
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said "the country is held hostage" by the debate raging over how to help Detroit's Big Three automakers — and the prospect of congressional inaction.
Frank spoke during the second day of testimony from the automakers seeking a government bailout of up to $34 billion — and shortly after the government reported the biggest monthly job loss in 34 years.
Skeptical lawmakers are weighing whether to dole out as much as $34 billion in aid to the automakers as the once-mighty companies make their second round of pleas for government help to keep them from collapsing by year's end and potentially deepening the nation's already painful recession.
"For us to do nothing, to allow bankruptcies and failures in one or three of these companies in the midst of the worst credit crisis and the worst unemployment situation that we've had in 70 years would be a disaster," Frank said ahead of testimony to his House Financial Services Committee from the CEOs of General Motors Corp., Ford and Chrysler LLC.
Congress is considering a range of options, including a government-run oversight board. But no plan seems to be gaining much traction.
It is the second day of testimony for the auto chiefs, who tried to sell the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday on a new plan that would total $34 billion, up from the $25 billion they requested just two weeks ago.
"I don't want to send you home again because it's going to get more expensive," joked Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York.
He told the automakers they faced "the fury of the American public" and that was making it harder for Congress to reach a consensus.
Employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, shooting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Separately, GM said it would lay off about 2,000 more factory workers early next year as the U.S. auto sales slump continues to wreak havoc.
The government would order a major restructuring of Detroit's struggling Big Three auto companies in exchange for a multibillion-dollar bailout under a plan circulating in Congress.
With several lawmakers in both parties pressing automakers to consider a pre-negotiated bankruptcy — something they have consistently shunned — members of Congress and the Big Three both were contemplating a government-run restructuring that would yield similar results, including massive downsizing and labor givebacks. |
