Detroit automakers, teetering on the brink of collapse, await short-term help, which, according to a key senator, could reach $15 billion for GM and Chrysler.
(AP Photo/Getty Images /Reuters )
Conservative Republicans admonished the White House Tuesday not to use bank-bailout billions to rescue distressed U.S. automakers, and a key Democrat demanded the government get veto power over the companies' business decisions as a condition of any aid.
The Bush administration said it was still evaluating options and suggested any deal would require major concessions by all sides. Complicating its task, lawmakers in both parties — having failed in their efforts to push a $14 billion auto rescue through a bailout-weary Congress — were pressing for an array of terms and conditions they said should be part of any Plan B.
"We are not going to be rushed into it," presidential press secretary Dana Perino declared.
Only a day earlier, President George W. Bush suggested that a rescue package would come sooner rather than later. "An abrupt bankruptcy for autos could be devastating for the economy," Bush said on Monday. "This will not be a long process because of the economic fragility of the autos."
Still, conservative Republican lawmakers, many from Southern states that are home to Japanese auto plants, wrote to Bush asking him not to use one of the most readily available pots of money — the $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund — to help the U.S. carmakers.
And the White House and Treasury Department were in talks with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who has been pressing for big union concessions in exchange for rescue money, on the terms and structure of a possible bailout, said a senior GOP congressional aide.
Corker came close last week to striking a deal with the United Auto Workers union for a $14 billion bill that would have forced the carmakers to bring their wages and benefits in line with those of Japanese auto companies in the U.S. by a specific date in 2009. The measure collapsed after the UAW refused to agree to wage cuts that quickly. The new contacts with the administration were disclosed on condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to divulge them.
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