By GottaLaff
Here's a version of the auto bailout bill that's circulating on the Hill right now. (redline.doc.)
It calls for the president will appoint a car czar to administer this, but both sides won't call the czar a czar. He or she will be merely an "adviser." Any new expenditure greater than $25 million would be subject to this administrator's approval.
One of the biggest concessions that Democrats seem to have wrung out of Detroit is a promise to drop their lawsuits against state governments trying to get them to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. [...]
Republicans say this provision is toxic, as it would essentially allow 16 states to have a veto over the automakers internal manufacturing processes, thereby increasing costs dramatically in the short term.
The Democrats seem to have conceded, in turn, that the bailouts funds -- $15 billion -- will be redirected from the loan guarantees written into the 2007 energy bill, at least initially. [...]
Automakers would have seven years to pay back the loans at an interest rate of 5% for five years and then 9% for the remaining two. Note: the '07 bill contained $25 billion in loan guarantees, but the $7 billion appropriated by Congress to guarantee those loans now secures only about $15 million.
More money would be made available in the spring of 2009, but there is apparently no agreement on this provision just yet.
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