viability exam...White House task force to test-drive Volt in Detroit
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Top advisers to the White House auto industry task force will test-drive the technology behind the Chevrolet Volt and meet with top executives from GM and Chrysler on Monday in Detroit.
The advisers -- Wall Street investment fund manager Steve Rattner and corporate restructuring expert Ronald Bloom -- will visit General Motors Corp.'s technical center in Warren and Chrysler LLC's nearby truck assembly plant, an Obama administration official said Sunday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the trip would include a look at labs where technology for the Volt is being developed, and a test drive of a demonstration vehicle equipped with the Volt's hybrid electric drive. They also will meet with United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, said the official.
The advisers have spent more than two weeks holding a series of meetings with industry executives, elected officials and outside analysts -- a crash course on the industry's crisis leading up to a March 31 deadline for President Barack Obama to approve or reject restructuring plans the companies submitted in February. GM and Chrysler are seeking as much as $21 billion in aid, on top of more than $17 billion in loans the companies have used to survive.
In addition to Rattner and Bloom, two top aides to Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, will attend the meetings, the administration official said. Diana Farrell, Summers' top deputy, and National Economic Council aid Brian Deese will travel to Detroit.
As the auto companies were preparing to make their case, two influential Senate Republicans said Sunday the Obama administration should led GM fall into bankruptcy.
The statements by Sens. John McCain and Richard Shelby highlighted the continuing GOP resistance to federal aid for the struggling companies. And Thomas Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said "I'd like to see the (Detroit) three become two" -- suggesting that Chrysler should be allowed to fail or merged with another company.
The automakers and their supporters in Washington have largely rejected bankruptcy, saying the companies likely would not emerge from a court-ordered reorganization, largely because customers would be reluctant to buy cars from bankrupt companies. Obama administration officials have so far refused to clearly rule out bankruptcy as an option.
McCain, R-Ariz. said on "Fox News Sunday" that the Obama needs to allow both GM and struggling Wall Street banks go into bankruptcy, calling bankruptcy the only way for the companies to restructure and rework labor and other contracts. McCain had supported some aid to the industry during his 2008 presidential campaign -- he rejected, then embraced, a $25 billion loan program for plant retooling, telling workers at GM's Warren technical center in September, "We're not going to leave the workers here in Michigan hung out to dry while we give billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street."
But McCain was an ardent opponent of the Bush administration's use of the Wall Street bailout fund for loans to GM and Chrysler.
Shelby, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, has opposed auto aid from the start. Appearing on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Shelby again laid the blame for the industry's woes on the United Auto Workers.
"I've suggested they go into Chapter 11 (bankruptcy), that's where they belong," he said of GM and Chrysler. "Short of that, the UAW will run those companies and run them into the ground."
But a Michigan Republican warned that bankruptcy would only deepen the nation's economic crisis.
"If GM and Chrysler are allowed to go in bankruptcy they will not come out," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Livonia, said Sunday on Fox News Channel. "This will exacerbate the foreclosure crisis, it will continue to hurt the credit crisis."
The Chamber of Commerce supported the original loans, but Donohue, the influential business group's president, has said he is skeptical about additional aid and has suggested bankruptcy be one possibility. On "This Week," he didn't clearly embrace bankruptcy, but said GM in particular "has to be willing to be very, very tough and take the big step, if they have to. Otherwise, they're not going to get any place with their unions or be able to deal with the franchise rules in the states on the dealers." |
