Republicans Propose Putting GM Into The Hands Of Public

By Annie Berman — Talk Radio News Service

Republican Senators Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Robert Bennett (Utah) held a press conference today to introduce the “Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act”. The legislation will require the Treasury Department to distribute stock in the newly restructured companies to individual taxpayers within one year of the GM bankruptcy proceedings.

“This is the best way to get the auto companies out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats and politicians, and into the hands of the American people and the marketplace where it belongs,” Alexander said in his opening statements.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) added two amendments to Alexander’s bill. The first amendment will give the Secretary of the Treasury the same fiduciary responsibilities that any director of a company would have. The second, being that no additional money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) would be distributed to bankrupt companies.

TARP is a program that was enacted in 2008, originally, to address the credit crisis. Recently, funds from this program have been used to help banks like Bank of America.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said, “I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Alexander-Bennett amendment because they joined two excellent ideas together in something that I think is critical.”

Alhough Kyl didn’t add any additional terms to the bill, he spoke for the American people, saying, “They are fed up with the government taking over those businesses and running those businesses.”

Kyl explained that if the government were to hold the 60% of stock that it needs to own the company, it would result in a loss. He claimed that there would be an opposite result if the taxpaying public were to own the stock instead.

When asked about tomorrow’s announcement of the Unemployment Rate, Sen. Bennett said, “I can’t forecast what we are going to see tomorrow… One of the things we have learned, is that artificial attempts to maintain employment that go against market forces prolong recessions and sometimes turn them into depressions.”