GM: We need $12 billion to stay in business

WASHINGTON - Humbled and fighting for survival, Detroit’s once-mighty automakers appealed to Congress with a retooled case for a huge bailout Tuesday, pledging to slash workers, car lines and executive pay in return for a federal lifeline. GM said it wouldn’t last till New Year’s without an immediate $4 billion and could drag the entire industry down if it fails.

General Motors Corp., asking for as much as $18 billion to keep afloat and survive even worse economic storms, painted the direst portrait to date of what could happen if Congress doesn’t quickly step in.

“There isn’t a Plan B,” said Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson. “Absent support, frankly, the company just can’t fund its operations.” Without help, he warned, “the company will default in the near term, very likely precipitating a total collapse of the domestic industry and its extensive supply chain, with a ripple effect that will have severe, long-term consequences to the U.S. economy.”

New sales figures underscored the seriousness of the situation. Ford said its November U.S. light vehicle sales tumbled 31 percent, while sales at Toyota, Japan’s No. 1 automaker, fell 34 percent despite its extension of zero-percent financing on many vehicles.

Democratic leaders have said they might call Congress back next week to pass an auto bailout — but only if the carmakers’ blueprints show the Big Three have reasonable plans to stay viable with the help.

Making no commitments, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday, “We want to see a commitment to the future. We want to see a restructuring of their approach, that they have a new business model, a new business plan.” She said, “it is my hope that we would” pass legislation to help the industry.

All three plans envision the government getting a stake in the auto companies that would allow taxpayers to share in future gains if they recover.

Along with detailed stabilization plans, the auto executives were offering up a hefty dose of humility and a host of symbolic concessions designed to repair their images, badly tattered after they arrived in Washington last month on three separate private jets to plead for federal help.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally, GM CEO Rick Wagoner and Chrysler chief Bob Nardelli all planned to road-trip to Washington in fuel-efficient hybrid cars for hearings on Thursday and Friday.

Mulally and Wagoner both said they’d work for $1 per year if their firms took any government loan money, while Ford offered to cancel management bonuses and salaried employees’ merit raises next year, and GM said it would slash top executives’ pay. Both said they would sell their corporate aircraft.

This executives are going out of their way to show deference to lawmakers and a willingness to flog themselves for past mistakes. “I think we learned a lot from that experience,” Mulally told The Associated Press in an interview.

Ford Motor Co., in far better shape than GM and Chrysler LLC, asked for a $9 billion “standby line of credit” to stabilize its business but said it didn’t expect to tap the funds unless one of Detroit’s other Big Three went bust. Its plan projected Ford would break even or turn a pretax profit in 2011.

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