![\"\"](\"http:\/\/c0.nrostatic.com\/sites\/default\/files\/assembly.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday, the CEO of America\u2019s biggest auto company will apologize for her company\u2019s negligence in pursuing a defective part that has been linked to the loss of 13 lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as l learned about the problem, we acted without hesitation. Whatever mistakes were made in the past, we will not shirk from our responsibilities now and in the future,\u201d Barra will say of the recall of 2.5 million vehicles with potentially faulty ignition switches,\u00a0according to a copy of her written testimony<\/a>\u00a0released Monday. \u201cThat begins with my sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall. My management team and I\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0will hold ourselves fully accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Barra\u2019a contrition is a jarring contrast to President Obama\u2019s arrogant defense of his disastrous Affordable Care Act. America\u2019s CEO lied about his product and has refused to recall it even as millions (including cancer patients<\/a>) have suffered from the loss of their insurance and doctors. Calling for a full investigation by a U.S. attorney, Barra promises \u201cwe will be fully transparent with you, with our regulators, and with our customers.\u201d Obama refuses anything of the sort. Such are the expectations of our political leaders vs. our business leaders.<\/p>\n For all GM\u2019s troubles, \u201cSwitchgate\u201d \u2014 named for the faulty ignition switch that can inadvertently stall cars made between 2005\u20132011 \u2014 could ultimately benefit Barra and her company.<\/p>\n As the first female CEO of an American automaker, Barra will benefit from enormous political \u00a0goodwill. She is assisted by the fact that none of the cars effected are still in production. They are relics of an old GM \u2014 a pre-bankruptcy GM that was burdened by excessive labor costs, pension overhead, and poorly designed sedan products.<\/p>\n With the massive recall, Barra can help sever Old GM from New GM, putting in place safety systems (she has already announced a new veep for Global Vehicle Safety) that will assure that Switchgate won\u2019t be repeated. Indeed, the ignition snafu is an anomaly in a company \u2014 and an industry \u2014 that is quick to recall unsafe products. For example, the 2005 Chrysler Pacifica\u00a0\u2013 of similar vintage to Switchgate star, the Chevy Cobalt \u2014 also had a mysterious stalling problem. It was recalled within two years of launch.<\/p>\n Conspiracies will abound. Did GM bury Swtichgate because of pressure to keep a new vehicle launch on schedule? Did Chevy resist the recall expense because the company was in increasing financial straits?<\/p>\n Perhaps.<\/p>\n But GM insiders say there likely is no smoking gun \u2014 that the Cobalt\u2019s (and Pontiac Solstice, and Chevy HHR, etc.) ignition was considered by engineers to be a mechanical issue that never rose to the level of safety defect (thus, its part number was never changed even after the ignition was fixed sometime around 2007).<\/p>\n The deaths associated with the ignition had muddying factors \u2014 drivers were alcohol-impaired or youngsters driving in wet conditions \u2014 preventing easy connection of the dots. By the time the ignition was definitively linked to air-bag deployment \u2014 circa 2009 \u2013\u00a0the part had been repaired.<\/p>\n Critics \u2014 my NRO colleague Jim Geraghty\u00a0among them<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 will rightly question whether Switchgate was further buried by a government-run bankruptcy (would NHTSA embarrass its own White House with a recall?). Fair enough. But the White House Auto Task Force was uninterested in liability \u2014 only in quickly restructuring the company\u2019s balance sheet so that the UAW could survive andcontinue to feed the Democratic Party campaign cash<\/a>. It was a UAW bailout, not an auto bailout.<\/p>\n In crisis there is opportunity, and GM has a chance to redeem itself under the hot glare of public attention. With the best products it has ever produced in showrooms now (new Corvette, new Malibu, new Tahoe, new Caddies, etc.), a new focus on customer service would do a lot of good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday, the CEO of America\u2019s biggest auto company will apologize for her company\u2019s negligence in pursuing a defective part that has been linked to the loss of 13 lives. \u201cAs soon as l learned about the problem, we acted without hesitation. Whatever mistakes were made in the past, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14611,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610\/revisions\/14611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}