Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry
Encyclopedia
The Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry is an ad hoc group of United States cabinet
United States Cabinet
The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, which are generally the heads of the federal executive departments...

-level and other officials that was formed to deal with the financial bail out of automakers Chrysler Corporation and General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

.

Based on an assessment that automobile manufacturing was a critical sector of the economy providing 3 to 4 million jobs for Americans, that liquidation was imminent for two of the three major U.S. automakers, and that the break ups would devastate the U.S. economy, the U.S. government became involved in the day-to-day management decisions of Chrysler and General Motors through the Task Force.

The Task Force was formed in February 2009, and began meetings at that time. It reviewed financial and operational restructuring plans submitted by Chrysler and General Motors (GM) and made its own specific recommendations at cabinet level meetings to the President regarding the restructurings and the requests for funds from the companies. Recommendations also included directives on improving wage and benefit structures, and developing fuel efficient competitive cars for the future. In March, 2009, the Task Force recommended up to $5 billion in support for automotive industry suppliers, and by late May 2009, following the recommendations of the Task Force, the U.S. government had lent approximately $25 billion in total to the companies. At that time, it was estimated that GM might require $30 billion more to emerge out of bankruptcy. By mid July, 2009, both companies had restructured and emerged from bankruptcy. The Task Force was scaled back from "day to day" involvement to periodic "monitoring".

Members and Official Designees

Task Force is composed of the following cabinet members and public officials:

Members

  • Co-chairs:
    • Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner
    • National Economic Council Director, Larry Summers
  • Secretary of Transportation
  • Secretary of Commerce
  • Secretary of Labor
  • Secretary of Energy
  • Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers
    Council of Economic Advisers
    The Council of Economic Advisers is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy...

    , Christina Romer
    Christina Romer
    Christina D. Romer is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration...

  • Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag
    Peter R. Orszag
    Peter Richard Orszag is an American economist who is a Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup. He is also a columnist at Bloomberg View...

  • Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
  • Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change
  • Senior Advisor on Auto Issues at the Treasury Department, Ron Bloom
    Ron Bloom
    From February 2009 to August 2011, Ron Bloom served as a senior official in the Obama Administration. From February 2011 to August 2011, Bloom served at the White House as the Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy...


Official Designees

Of the Members of the Presidential Task Force:
  • Diana Farrell
    Diana Farrell
    Diana Farrell was a member and one of two Deputy Directors of the United States National Economic Council in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was also a member of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry. On November 22, 2010, Farrell announced that she would be leaving...

    , Deputy Director, National Economic Council
  • Gene Sperling
    Gene Sperling
    Gene B. Sperling is an American lawyer and political figure, currently serving as a Counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He is also on the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he serves as Senior Fellow for Economic Policy and Director of the Center on Universal Education. He...

    , Counselor to the Secretary of Treasury
  • Jared Bernstein
    Jared Bernstein
    Jared Bernstein is an American economist who previously served as Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden in the Obama Administration. In early 2009 Bernstein was named Executive Director of the newly formed White House Middle Class Working Families Task Force. He...

    , Chief Economist to Vice President Biden
  • Jay Williams
    Jay Williams (politician)
    Roy Kojo Jawara Williams is the executive director of the federal Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, and the former mayor of Youngstown, Ohio. His election in 2005 gained local and regional media attention because it brought Youngstown its first African-American mayor as well...

    , Senior Advisor, Department of Labor
  • Lisa Heinzerling, Senior Climate Policy Counsel to the EPA Administrator
  • Austan Goolsbee
    Austan Goolsbee
    Austan Dean Goolsbee is an American economist, formerly serving as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the youngest member of the cabinet of President Barack Obama. Goolsbee is from the University of Chicago where he is the Robert P...

    , Staff Director and Chief Economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board
  • Dan Utech, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy
  • Heather Zichal
    Heather Zichal
    Heather Zichal is the Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, serving in the Barack Obama administration since 2009. Following the early 2011 departure of Carol Browner from the administration, Zichal gained the general responsibility of coordinating the administration's...

    , Deputy Director, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change
  • Joan DeBoer, Chief of Staff, Department of Transportation
    Department of Transportation
    The Department of Transportation is the most common name for a government agency in North America devoted to transportation. The largest is the United States Department of Transportation, which oversees interstate travel. All U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and many local agencies also have...

  • Rick Wade, Senior Advisor, Department of Commerce

See also

  • Automotive industry crisis of 2008-2009
  • Corporate welfare
    Corporate welfare
    Corporate welfare is a pejorative term describing a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations. The term compares corporate subsidies and welfare payments to the poor, and implies that corporations are much less...

  • List of U.S. executive branch czars
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