Turning money and Detroit over to the energy hate groups

Opinion Journal:

When is $25 billion in taxpayer cash insufficient to bail out Detroit's auto makers? Answer: When the money is a tool of Congressional industrial policy to turn GM, Ford and Chrysler into agents of the Sierra Club and other green lobbies.

That's the little-understood subplot of the Washington melodrama over a taxpayer rescue for Detroit. In their public statements, proponents describe the bailout as an attempt to save jobs, American manufacturing and the middle-class way of life. But look closely and you can see that what's really going on is an attempt to use taxpayer money to remake Detroit in the image of the modern environmental movement. Given a choice between greens and blue-collar workers, Congress puts the greens first.

This political contradiction has come into sharp relief since President Bush offered a significant compromise late last week on the use of taxpayer cash. Earlier this year, Congress had approved $25 billion in loans to the car companies for "green retooling," and the White House said Friday that Detroit could tap that money quickly for more general purposes with a couple of conditions.

The companies merely have to present a business plan to the Energy Secretary showing how the cash would keep them "viable," which is to say competitive as profit-making concerns. This could be a proposal to renegotiate labor contracts, or perhaps a merger proposal, or other plan of action. But here's the real catch for Congress: Mr. Bush said Democrats would also have to remove the green strings that they themselves had attached to that $25 billion.

Democratic leaders refused. They are insisting instead that the Bush Administration give Detroit another $25 billion in cash from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program. "The Bush Administration's proposal is unacceptable," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The Administration's plan would require additional legislative action in the House and Senate and the President's signature -- but there is no reason to start at square one when Secretary [Henry] Paulson can protect millions of American jobs in one of our most important industries with the stroke of a pen."

Yet if the problem is so urgent, why keep the green chains on that first $25 billion? GM in particular is saying that it may have to declare bankruptcy by the end of the year without a taxpayer capital injection. Aren't jobs at stake?

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All of this shows that Democrats don't merely want to save jobs. They want an entirely different American auto industry that serves goals other than selling cars to consumers. The green lobbies have disliked Detroit for decades -- for resisting fleet mileage standards and having the audacity to make SUVs, trucks and other vehicles that people have wanted to buy but that violate modern environmental pieties. For the greens, the bailout is their main chance to remake Detroit according to their dictates.

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The belief in magic energy and engineering drives much of the environmental wacko wing of the Democrat party. They seem to beleive they can legislate magic and ask the rest of us to pay for it. The fact is that even if we devoted $700 billion to their objectives it still would not produce the solution they are looking for.

Because of uncompetitive labor contracts the auto industry has been shown to be much more fragile than Democrats ever imagined. Demanding magic engineering on top of those contracts is a bridge they can't cross.