What the heck is this?
where is the Republican congressional and party leadership?
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
“$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.