Tales from the Trail

Gulp.
    
Senate brinksmanship kills a proposed $14 billion bailout for Detroit’s struggling “Big Three” automakers, so eyes turn back to the White House. 
    
The Senate is due back in session at 10 a.m. Eastern for what could be a quick round of final recriminations.
    
Analysts say the most immediate hope for help for GMC, Chrysler and Ford is now the Bush administration, which could possibly decide to use financial bailout funding to help the massive car manufacturers — if there’s any money left.
    
Bush, who had resisted this idea in the past, is headed to Texas A&M University where he is due to deliver a commencement address. The White House said this morning it was willing to consider steps to avoid an auto apocalypse.
    
There’s finger pointing in every direction — the UAW union, recalcitrant Republicans, overreaching Democrats, and the lame-duck White House — but nobody seems sure what happens next for companies which say they are responsible for one out of 10 U.S. jobs.
    
Stock futures were down, indicating that benchmark U.S. indexes could open down about 3 percent or more amid a worldwide sell-off. 
    
Meanwhile, whatever attention is left is fixed firmly on Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is still in office three days after being charged with corruption in connection with allegations that he sought to “sell” the vacant U.S. Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama.
    
Lots of people seem to want the man out — Obama described himself as “appalled” — but there’s no word on whether Blagojevich  intends to resign. Obama, who has sought to distance himself from the Democratic governor, has no public events scheduled today.

Click here for more Reuters political news. 

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (Bush on South Lawn)

Washington is focused on one issue this morning — how to stop the U.S. auto industry from driving off a cliff.
 
The Senate reconvenes on Monday, and congressional aides say it may consider as early as Tuesday legislation on a $15 billion deal to rescue America’s “Big Three” automakers from oblivion.
 
Democratic negotiators in Congress modified their draft proposal on Sunday, a congressional aide said, and planned to get it to the White House for consideration.
 
The New York Times and Washington Post reported that Democrats were considering creating an oversight board made up of five cabinet secretaries and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and led by an independent chairman or “car czar”.
 
The board would oversee the restructuring that the car giants have agreed to in exchange for the short-term loans. The Post said the board would develop broad restructuring goals for the companies but could not compel them to act.
 
Investors appeared confident on Monday that the automakers will be thrown a financial lifeline. Shares of General Motors shot up 22.5 percent to $5 before the bell, and Ford shares climbed 19.5 percent to $3.25.
 
U.S. stock index futures also rose on hopes that President-elect Barack Obama’s plan for major infrastructure investment will help get the economy back on its feet.  

Elsewhere in Washington, President George W. Bush will attend a Christmas reception for children at the White House before visiting the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia.

DETROIT – No stranger to criticism of the U.S. auto industry, Barack Obama made it personal this week when he singled out his candidate for Detroit’s “worst car” ever: the 1970s-era Ford Granada.

The cutting comment came in an interview with an Indiana radio station and then was picked up by the Detroit News, seized on as a talking point for Detroit radio and stirring debate in Internet chat rooms as of Wednesday.

Obama said he had learned to drive first on his grandfather’s Ford Granada, a boxy, big-engined sedan that Ford once tried to market as a kind of Everyman’s Mercedes-Benz.