Day 28
Monday, February 16, 2009 (Federal Holiday)
Over the Weekend:
* Obama Backs Off “Car Czar” to Oversee Detroit (according to the Wall Street Journal), instead delegating the task to a Presidential Task Force on Autos, which will be co-chaired by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and include officials from several Federal agencies, including Treasury, Labor, Transportation, Commerce and Energy. Meanwhile, GM and Chrylser raced to meet a February 17 deadline to present to the Federal government “viability plans” mandated by the terms of their bailout agreement. “By naming a task force instead of a czar, the president is reserving for himself any decision on the viability of GM and Chrysler,” according to a New York Times news service article’s paraphrase of an Obama administration official. According to this article, David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, February 15, “‘We’re going to need a restructuring of these companies,’” adding “that a turnaround of the companies would ‘require sacrifice not just from the autoworkers but also from creditors, from shareholders and the executives who run the company.’” Of note, the Presidential Task Force appears to include no representation for the auto industry’s management side or its shareholders and bondholders. However, Ron Bloom, a labor union negotiator and former investment banker, was named a senior adviser to the Treasury Department on the “auto crisis”. The Wall Street Journal described Bloom as having “a record for demanding harsh concessions from manufacturers, unions and investors alike.” The Obama Administration apparently hopes that Bloom and the Task Force will be able to overcome the current major obstacle to auto industry restructuring, namely stalled negotiations with the UAW (over a retiree health care trust) and with bondholders (over corporate debt reduction).
* Senator Roland Burris (D-IL), who was appointed to Obama’s vacant Senate seat by disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich, admitted that Blago’s brother asked him to raise funds for Blago before Burris was selected for his current office. He did not reveal this fact during testimony to the IL Legislature’s Impeachment Committee in January.
Executive Branch:
* White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday that Obama “hasn’t made a decision on augmenting our force structure in Afghanistan.” Today Gibbs said he expects Obama to decide “shortly” on sending more troops to Afghanistan but declined to be pinned down on exactly when.