It keeps getting stupider:
Majority Democrats and the Bush White House finalized a deal to spend $14 billion on emergency loans for struggling U.S. automakers, congressional officials said — despite fierce opposition from some Republicans.
On Wednesday, the White House revealed elements of the $14 billion “bridge financing,” which would give until March 31 for the Big Three automakers to have a plan to make the firms “viable” or “the government gets its money back.”
The government gets its money back? How is that going to work?! The automakers are going to spend the money! If they were going to have $14 billion lying around on March 31, they wouldn’t need a bailout.
But let’s suppose it actually were possible for them to return the money. What is the likelihood that Congress will actually make them to so? They won’t have a workable plan, that’s for certain. (They’ve failed for decades to fix their companies; they won’t do it in three months just because Congress says they really really need to.) But why should we believe that Congress will be more willing to bury them in three months than they are now?
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