Automaker aid bill doesn’t have needed votes

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Democrats’ plan to tap the Wall Street rescue fund to save U.S. automakers doesn’t have the votes to pass.

One day after Detroit’s Big Three sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for $34 billion in government aid, Reid said there’s still not enough support in Congress for using some of the $700 billion bailout to help the teetering carmakers.

He told The Associated Press in an interview, “I just don’t think we have the votes to do that now.”

The Bush administration and auto-state Republicans and Democrats are pushing instead to take a $25 billion program to help the carmakers produce green vehicles and convert that into emergency loans.

Automakers and their union worked feverishly Wednesday to sell a skeptical Congress on a $34 billion aid plan, promising labor concessions and restructuring in advance of a second round of hearings.

In Capitol Hill meetings, industry officials said the collapse of one or more of the Big Three carmakers could deepen the recession and undermine the companies’ ability to survive.

“We’re on the brink with the U.S. auto manufacturing industry. We’re down to months left,” Chrysler’s vice chairman, Jim Press, told The Associated Press in an interview. “If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it’s a huge blow. It could trigger a depression.”

Video   Chrysler exec on autos crisis Dec. 3: Chrysler’s Press: ‘If one of the automakers goes down, the rest go with it.’ CNBC

GM’s president and chief operating officer, Fritz Henderson, who met with congressional aides, said choosing the bankruptcy route would further erode consumer confidence in his company. About 25 auto dealers also combed through the House and Senate office buildings surrounding the Capitol, lobbying for the bailout package.

The UAW, scrambling to preserve jobs and benefits, agreed at an emergency meeting in Detroit to delay the companies’ payments to a multibillion-dollar, union-run health care trust and scale back a jobs bank in which laid-off workers are paid most of their wage. The concessions could help soothe some lawmakers who had criticized the union’s benefits as too rich when compared with those of workers at foreign-brand auto plants in the U.S..

“It should be helpful. It’s additional evidence that the UAW’s willing to participate in the painful restructuring,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a top supporter of the industry.

General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. submitted three separate survival plans to Congress this week after flunking their first attempt to persuade lawmakers to throw them a lifeline.

GM and Chrysler said they needed an immediate infusion of government cash to last until New Year’s, and both said they could drag the entire industry down if they fail. Ford wants a $9 billion “standby line of credit” in case a competitor fails.

Chrysler said it needed $7 billion by year’s end to keep operating. GM asked for an immediate $4 billion as the first installment of a $12 billion loan, plus a $6 billion line of credit to use if conditions worsen.

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