Dems demand business plan from Big Three

“If there are lawmakers who want to help the automakers, and they have a path to do so, why are they going to kick the can down the road?” said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary.

The chief executives of the Big Three automakers appealed personally to lawmakers for the loans this week, saying their problem was the economic meltdown that has walloped their industry — not that they were manufacturing unappealing cars.

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.

Pelosi said she had little patience left for excuses from the carmakers on why they haven’t turned their businesses around.

Beyond the auto industry, lawmakers said the public has little appetite for anything else that smacks of a bailout, following the backlash against the $700 billion financial rescue.

“There is a sense that we did not do a good enough job of safeguarding the use of those funds, or providing prevention against abuse. And you could not get, I believe, through either house of Congress today what some people might think was a repeat. That’s why we need to take time,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Even if lawmakers return to vote, they are likely to insist on numerous conditions on any loans. Democrats and Republicans alike want the government to get a chance to share in future profits by the auto companies, require them to limit executives’ pay packages and prohibit use of the funds for lobbying or paying shareholders dividends.

In scrapping plans for a vote this week, the Democratic leaders sidetracked a bipartisan agreement to temporarily divert the fuel-efficiency funds to cover the auto companies’ operations.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that plan had a “reasonable chance” of passing, and that the leaders’ decision to delay it was “risky and unnecessary.”

“We need speed. This is a very, very important moment,” Levin said.

Indeed, the Democratic Congress — having just expanded its majorities in this month’s elections — was under immense pressure to show it could govern in a difficult situation.

“I can’t imagine a scenario where they wouldn’t come back, unless the answer is that they just don’t care. And if that’s the case, then the American people ought to know that,” Perino said.

The leaders of the Big Three automakers have painted a grim picture of their financial position. They burned through nearly $18 billion in cash reserves during the last quarter — about $7 billion at GM, almost $8 billion at Ford and $3 billion at Chrysler. GM and Chrysler have said they could collapse in weeks.

The stakes are high. The Detroit automakers employ nearly a quarter-million workers, and more than 730,000 other workers produce materials and parts that go into cars. About 1 million more people work in dealerships nationwide. If just one of the automakers declared bankruptcy, some estimates put U.S. job losses next year as high as 2.5 million.

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