Washington To Detroit: Drop Dead
This column was written by CBS News Early Show Co-Anchor Harry Smith.
Senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd says the chances that Congress can come up with the $25 billion U.S. car companies say they need to stay alive are slim to none.
Too much opposition, especially from Republicans who espouse a kind of economic Darwinism that suggests that businesses that deserve to die, should die, and will be replaced by better more efficient ones.
One wonders though if Congress over the years hasn't been complicit in Detroit's demise.
Passing laws that enabled lax fuel efficiency standards, Detroit's congressional lobby thought it was helping saving jobs.
Instead the effect was just the opposite.
If Congress had done the right thing in the first place, Detroit would have been in the habit of building cars and trucks with world leading fuel efficiency standards.
Now it's a scramble to survive and time is running out.
Brother can you spare a few billion?