Posted on 11/20/2008 8:05:53 PM PST by Born Conservative
After two days of congressional hearings into a proposed $25 billion automotive industry bailout, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski disagreed on the urgency for it.
“I am not yet convinced that Congress must act so rashly,” Mr. Kanjorski said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where the chief executives of the Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers Union testified.
Mr. Kanjorski is a committee member. The hearing was streamed over the Internet through the committee’s Web site.
Mr. Casey, a Banking Committee member who heard from the executives at a committee meeting Tuesday, said the only advantage to waiting is Congress can fashion a package that includes an overall economic stimulus.
“I’d rather act now because I think another two months is just going to make it more difficult,” he said.
Congressional Democratic leaders have pushed for a vote this week, but hopes for that evaporated.
Mr. Casey said any bailout should include only enough money monthly to meet each company’s “demonstrated need,” and a requirement for a detailed monthly accounting by the automakers.
He took the side of the industry when he blamed its troubles almost solely on the inability of consumers to obtain car loans in a frozen credit market rather than a failure to cut costs, especially labor costs, as many conservative Republicans charge.
“The public perception is they want the $25 billion, and they’ve made a lot of bad decisions and haven’t been (fuel) efficient,” Mr. Casey said. “I think the truth is that they need a bridge loan of $25 billion, they’ve made progress on cost-cutting and streamlining and fuel efficiency, but they still have a long way to go, and we’ve got to both help them in the short run, but also keep pushing them on these larger questions.
“The idea that they’re in this predicament because of labor costs is a bunch of malarkey.”
In a statement at the Financial Services Committee hearing Mr. Kanjorski blamed the automakers’ plight on “ineffective management, a lack of innovation, exploding health care and pension costs, a struggling economy, increasing commodity prices and changing consumer preferences.”
Mr. Kanjorski became somewhat angry when General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner couldn’t say how much the company would need to survive until March 30 in a “worst-case scenario” so that Congress could come up with a proposal that properly controls use of the bailout money.
The best Mr. Wagoner could say is GM’s approximately $10 billion to $12 billion share of the bailout money would keep the company afloat through the end of next year.
Force restructuring. Romney is right
this is like getting second opinions about your cancer....from two used car dealers.
Senator Casey,
Allow me to put it in “bitter/clinger” Pennsylvanian terms:
Get your hands out of our damned pockets!
B/C by PA
I am from Pennsylvania as well and I was hoping that Casey would not do anything for the next four years so people would say that he wasn’t doing anything. These headlines don’t allow that to happen regardless of what the minority Republicans say in PA...Ugh!!! In 2010, hopefully we will keep our Republican seat or Pennsylvania will be officially all blue!!! I can’t believe it. And I still blame the entire thing on Ridge getting the Homeland Security gig...that was the beginning of Pennsylvania turning blue...before that exact day, we had the governor seat and two senate seats. Now we are down to one senate seat.
LOL!
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