Posted on 12/05/2008 11:11:13 PM PST by Doofer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Help may soon be on the way to the struggling U.S. auto industry after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed off her opposition to using funds from a fuel-efficiency research program for a bailout, two congressional officials said Friday.
The significant move from Pelosi signals that the deadlock over rescuing Detroit may be over.
Congressional Republicans and President Bush support the idea of tapping the $25 billion advanced technology fund. Two officials familiar with compromise talks told CNN that the working target is $15 billion to $17 billion in bridge loans, intended to fund the struggling Big Three automakers through March.
However, one senior Democratic congressional source told CNN that House and Senate committee staff will meet over the weekend to write a bill to provide $20 billion to $25 billion in assistance to the U.S. auto companies.
This aide said the "mathematicians were working" at how to reprogram the money by reducing a subsidy to come up with a figure that would be available for loans, despite an earlier report that only $7.5 billion was available from the fund passed last year for fuel efficiency research.
This aide said the bill could be on the House floor as early as Tuesday, but thought it was more likely that the Senate would vote on the bill first.
"They need to get Republicans on board and send an important signal for House members to vote for this," the aide said.
The officials cautioned that talks are still very fluid and that there are still other options on the table and many details to discuss.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
What the heck is this?
where is the Republican congressional and party leadership?
If Nancy Pelosi and the Sierra Club are the de facto new CEO of GM, you can be sure I won’t buy what they are selling.
Hybrids???
I want something that goes real fast and gets really shitty gas mileage.
Out for breakfast, lunch and dinner...
no matter how bad things are, they can always be worse.
Unfortunately many are going to learn this lesson in way they will never forget.
That $25B is just play money the Democrats threw at the carmakers ostensibly to R&D "green" cars. Whatever. The idea was to pander to their enviro-wackjob constituency while using Detroit carmakers to launder their campaign dough through the UAW at the same time. (yawn) Nothing new about that.
What's interesting is that the rats had to wink and nod at the right greenies and reassure them that they'll end up well greased after January 20th, so be patient and don't dump on us for this little charade.
That’s the money they already voted to give them to revamp the factories for greener cars. The money, evidently hadn’t been distributed yet (it was voted on in September) but Pelosi didn’t want to touch that money and wanted to give them “new” funds. Here’s a link from September that talks about the original “bailout” for technology improvement.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/25/business/fi-auto25
Neither party in Washington listening to anything Americans say. They know better.
I’m wondering why a man making $9.00 an hour should help out a man making $28.00 plus an hour. Where is the logic?
The bailout will occur when Barney gets a Hummer!
“$25 billion advanced technology fund.”
Washington has been meddling in the auto industry for most of my life, and that spans most of the US Auto industry. Congressional mandates over emissions, safety, size and weight and a thousand other things have burdened the manufacturers and the consumers alike, and allowed foreign auto makers to catch and surpass our domestic market in both quality and afordability. Now they will rescue the industry in a similar fashion to giving a drunk an unlimited supply of booze.
That is funny as hell, but Barney has already had too many Hummers.
Political speak for lets try this balloon first.
The answer, I think, is that Congress has failed to translate the influx of money to banks to consumers to get loans, etc. The Fuel efficiency crisis may be an “American” thing as GM has very efficient cars in other nations but they are not for sale in the US. GM has their hand in other companies all over the world, but we have Congress who wants to be on TV.
Cars wear out and we have to buy them from someone, who will it be?
they’ll do anything except allow the use of cheaper, higher mileage, clean-burning, low engine wear gasoline that is not controlled by big oil, big gasoline, and big auto.
Schumpeter, Schumpeter, Schumpeter.
We must bow to bigness and preserve it forever, no matter how it take from regular folks.
It’s kind of like the Egyptian priesthood.
The important thing is to make the pyramids in Detroit bigger.
GM makes this car and it gets 113 MPG and can go 140 MPH:
http://www.flixxy.com/fuel-economy-performance-car.htm
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