House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank,... 
(AP)In the Senate, opposition to the auto rescue wasn't limited to Republicans.
Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana announced he was against the measure because of a provision to bail out transit agencies that were involved in transactions that are now considered unlawful tax shelters.
House Republicans swiftly voiced their opposition and called for a plan that would instead provide government insurance to subsidize new private investment in the Big Three automakers, demand major labor givebacks and debt restructuring at the companies and encourage them to declare bankruptcy.
Under the House-passed measure, the carmakers would have to submit blueprints on March 31 to the industry overseer showing how they would restructure to ensure their survival, although they could be given until the end of May to negotiate with the government on a final agreement.
The carmakers initially asked Congress for $25 billion, then returned two weeks later to plead for as much as $34 billion. But with the White House refusing to dole out new spending for the Big Three, congressional Democrats agreed to use an existing program that was to help carmakers retool their factories to make more fuel-efficient cars.
That fund yielded only $15 billion in emergency loans, and when negotiators agreed to leave some money in the environmental program, the amount fell to $14 billion.
Democrats agreed to scrap language — which the White House had called a deal-breaker — that would have forced the carmakers to drop lawsuits challenging tough emissions limits in California and other states. But they kept a provision to force the automakers to abide by those states' limits — a kind of consolation prize for environmentalists, who already were livid at the raid of the fuel-efficiency program.
Senate Democrats unveiled a nearly identical measure that omitted the requirement, but that bill still faced long odds.
At the White House, Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan said the Bush administration would work with President-elect Barack Obama's team on choosing industry czar.
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