Treasury bailout targeted for Big 3

[napoleon_in_rags]

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/12/news/companies/auto_future/?postversion=2008121215

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Bush administration said Friday it might use taxpayer dollars set aside to bail out banks and Wall Street firms to keep troubled U.S. automakers out of bankruptcy.

The administration's announcement, which reverses its previous position on how to help the auto industry, effectively revives a bailout proposal killed by senators of the president's own party just hours earlier. That plan had the support of congressional Democrats and the White House, but would have used a different source of funds to provide $14 billion in federal loans.

The move could provide an 11th-hour short-term lifeline to General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC, which have warned they are within weeks of running out of the cash they need to continue to operate.

The defeat of a $14 billion bailout plan in the Senate late Thursday left the administration little choice but to tap the $700 billion bailout approved by Congress in October, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP.

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Now there's a solution I can get behind. I understand conservative opposition to bailouts in general, but having ALL that money going to bankers while conservatives pretend to have accomplished something by standing up against the comparatively tiny Big 3 bailout is unbearable hypocrisy. Let it come from the big bailout, and then lets keep the conversation on bailouts in general focused where it belongs, on that 700 billion.