The CEOs of the "Big Three" automakers ran into a lot of skepticism testifying before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday.
Lawmakers are worried that the same business practices that brought the automakers to the brink of bankruptcy will continue if and when they receive billions of dollars in federal bailout money.
In an exclusive interview with 9News, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says he's, "Very confident that this will work. We've asked a lot of questions. We understand this a lot better. The auto industry is much better prepared that these taxpayer protections will, in fact, work for all of us."
Asked to rate his confidence on a scale of 1-to-10, with 10 being extremely confident that taxpayers would get their money back, Brown said "an 8 or a 9," adding, "It's all about jobs and the middle class. If we don't do this, it's gonna' turn a recession in Ohio into something much worse than that."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has said the chances of an auto bailout package passing next week are slim.
Brown thinks that will change.
"I don't want to vote for money for the auto industry. I didn't want to vote for money for the banking industry. But, I knew, if we didn't do that, what would happen to our country's economy would be much, much worse," says Brown.
"And, I think people will come to that conclusion in the next week or so – that this is just something that needs to be done because it's about jobs, it's about the middle class, it's about getting out of this recession as strong and as quickly as we can," he says.
If Congress doesn't act next week, General Motors says it could go belly up by the end of the month.
Senator Brown agrees that a distinct possibility.
"I think there's a reasonably good chance that GM and Chrysler could really face the music in the next month," says Brown, "that they could – I don't want to make predictions that bad – but, I think that either of those companies, more so than Ford, could face bankruptcy in the next two or three weeks."
