WASHINGTON — President Obama's plan to save failing U.S. automakers -- and make them the instruments for creating a cleaner, greener transportation system -- marked a major step across the line that traditionally separates government from private industry.
His announcement Monday of a new position on bailing out Detroit went beyond a desire to be sure tax dollars were not wasted in bailing out struggling companies. It put the Obama administration squarely in the position of adopting a so-called industrial policy, in which government officials, not business executives or the free market, decided what kinds of products a company would make and how it would chart its future.
His automotive task force concluded, for example, that the Chevy Volt, the electric car being developed by General Motors Corp., would be too expensive to survive in the marketplace. It declared that GM was still relying too much on high-margin trucks and SUVs, and that Chrysler's best hope was to merge with a foreign automaker, Fiat.
Judgments like those are usually rendered in corporate boardrooms or announced in quarterly reports. But this time they were coming directly from the White House.
The notion that it was the president, not car company executives, who would pick such a course drew immediate criticism, especially from conservatives.
"When did the president become an expert in strategic corporate management?" said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. "The federal government is famous for its mismanagement, yet this administration continues to demonstrate its certainty that Washington always knows best."
Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, called it a "power grab" that "should send a chill through those who believe in free enterprise."
And Rush Limbaugh declared in his daily radio broadcast, "There's always been a line, ladies and gentlemen, over which no president would cross with respect to the distinction between the public and private sectors. Obama has now crossed that line where there is no limit to government's destruction of private activity or control over it."
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) defended the administration, suggesting that Detroit had had its chance. "My feeling is that we were too tolerant for too long and this is the tough medicine the taxpayer wants. And we have to reinvent our auto industry, or it will die."
