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Washington: Democratic leaders have ordered the United States' Big Three automakers to submit what amounts to a detailed loan application to Congress so lawmakers can decide whether to give the beleaguered industry an emergency $25 billion (Dh91.75 billion) lifeline.
In a letter to the auto executives released Friday afternoon, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the reigning Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, demanded a detailed accounting by December 2 of the companies' financial condition and short-term cash needs, as well as how they would achieve long-term viability.
"The auto companies' shareholders, business partners and prospective benefactors - the American people - deserve to see a plan that is accountable to taxpayers and that is viable for the long-term," Pelosi and Reid wrote.
The Democrats also told the automakers to show how they would ensure that the government would be reimbursed and share in future profits, eliminate dividends and lavish executive pay packages, meet fuel-efficiency standards and deal with their health care and pension obligations to workers if they received the federal help.
The Bush administration sharply criticised the Democrats for leaving Washington for a congressional recess without acting on a rescue for the car makers.
"How could they leave town when the auto companies were just here [this] week saying some of them were on the verge of running out of cash?" Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview. "I think it's a very irresponsible attitude toward a serious matter."
Leave town
White House press secretary Dana Perino said it was "appalling that Congress decided to leave town without addressing a problem that they themselves said needed to be addressed."
And President George W. Bush himself went on the offensive, although with more reserved language, to press the point that leaders failed to grab onto a bipartisan proposal.
"Unfortunately, the leadership in Congress adjourned without even allowing this measure to come up for a vote," Bush said in his Saturday radio address, taped Friday and released early by the White House.
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