President-elect Barack Obama said the government needs to provide help to U.S. automakers on condition that management, labor and lenders come up with a plan to make the industry “sustainable.”<\/p>\n
“For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment — not just for individual families but the repercussions across the economy would be dire,” Obama said in an interview broadcast this evening on CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” Government aid could come in the form of a “bridge loan,” he suggested.<\/p>\n
Under normal circumstances, Obama said, allowing General Motors Corp. to enter bankruptcy, undergo a restructuring and then emerge as “a viable operation” might have been a preferred route. If that were to happen now, he said, “you could see the spigot completely shut off so that it would not potentially permit GM to get back on its feet.”<\/p>\n