Our View - Saturday

Highway robbery

Automakers angling for federal bailout

Not much of what happens in Detroit has relevance here. But a wire report out of the Motor City that appeared in the July 21 Gazette should rivet every American’s attention. The story focused on the opening of contract talks between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers, and on what each might have to do (and sometimes give up) in order to restore competitiveness to an ailing industry. The “Big Three” pay workers between $70 and $76 an hour in wages and benefits. They need to eliminate a $25 to $30 per hour cost disparity with foreign counterparts in order to remain competitive. Is the union willing to make such concessions?

But suddenly, about midway through, the story took an unexpected detour, from Detroit to Washington — to which the company and union are apparently looking for help. And that’s the part that should have taxpayers buckling up.

“Chrysler and the union clearly are focused on health care, with both calling for a national solution to the problem of rising costs for active workers and the huge obligation to care for retirees,” the AP reported. One Chrysler executive said automakers “would begin a more aggressive grassroots lobbying campaign in Washington to address the costs.” A second Chrysler executive called health care “a national crisis.” Both complained that “they are competing against foreign automakers whose governments already pick up the tab for health care.” The story also noted UAW’s support for nationalized health care.

Now you’re beginning to see where this is headed.

The Big Three, which together lost $15 billion last year, “collectively have a $90.5 billion unfunded liability for retiree health care, and all are interested in reducing or eliminating it,” the AP reports. Foisting some or all of that burden onto taxpayers is what they evidently have in mind.

Rather than digging themselves out of this hole, the companies and union are angling for a bailout, either through federally imposed cost controls on health care or a nationalized system, which would allow them to unload these huge liabilities. They want to raid our paychecks to pay for their overpromising on contracts past.

And we wouldn’t discount their prospects for success, given that there are a lot of other American companies, also with huge health care and pension liabilities, and with armies of lobbyists at their disposal, thinking the same thing. With unionfriendly Democrats poised to take complete control in Washington, the odds are better still.

The automakers and the UAW got themselves into this situation. They shouldn’t look to Washington, or to taxpayers, for a way out. The bargaining table in Detroit is where solutions must be found, not the halls of Congress.

“What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa,” former GM President Charles Wilson once said. And it seems that this arrogant attitude lives on. “Corporate welfare” is too good a term for what this would be. Highway robbery is a better description.

Average Americans should slam the brakes on this idea before it really gets rolling.

House shows contempt for executive privilege

The House Judiciary Committee, on a straight party-line vote, has decided to issue contempt citations for White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers. The two decided, on the advice of current White House Counsel Fred Fielding, not to respond to subpoenas issued by the committee to testify about the firings of several federal prosecutors last year.

The contempt measure now goes to the full House. If the House approves it, the Justice Department will be asked to prosecute. Contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor that can carry a fine of up to $100,000 and a year in prison. But Brian Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, has already said the department would not be inclined to prosecute.

We’re inclined to think the committee is overreaching, and doing so in a way that is likely to discredit the concept of executive privilege. The words “executive privilege” do not appear in the U.S. Constitution, but our first president, George Washington, invoked the concept (without naming it) to deny a request from the House for documents relating to the Jay Treaty with England. He reasoned that the House had no constitutional authority in the treaty-making process, so he provided the documents to the Senate but not the House.

The modern justification for executive privilege — beyond the contention that some matters must be kept secret for reasons of national security, which is not at stake here — is that the knowledge that a conversation or memo might be made public could lead aides to be less than fully candid or discussions to be unduly circumscribed. But the law is hardly settled.

In the most relevant case, 1974’s U.S. v. Nixon, the Supreme Court acknowledged “the valid need for protection of communications,” but ruled that the privilege is not absolute and ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over audio tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor. Two weeks later he complied, and four days after that he resigned.

Executive privilege claims are usually defended or criticized on strictly partisan grounds. Republicans generally thought President Bill Clinton was abusing the privilege to keep close aides from testifying on the Lewinsky matter, but think President Bush is saving the country by invoking it now. Democrats, by and large, think the converse.

These issues are usually settled by compromise rather than going to court — which could take more than a year. We are hoping for a similar resolution in this case.