Friend of Angelo Senator wants GM head to quit for bailout

Senator Chris Dodd wants the head of GM as a bounty for approving the auto bailout on Capitol Hill.  Dodd told Face the Nation that Rick Wagoner had to leave as a condition of getting billions in taxpayer funds to keep the automaker in business.  That’s rich, coming from the man who got his own personal bailout from the nation’s most notorious subprime lender:

An influential senator drafting a multibillion-dollar bailout for Detroit’s Big Three automakers said Sunday that the head of General Motors should step down, while President-elect Barack Obama accused car industry executives of a persistent “head-in-the sand approach” to long-festering problems.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Banking Committee, said GM CEO Rick Wagoner “has to move on” as part of a government-run restructuring that should be a condition of financial life support for the auto industry.

“I think you have got to consider new leadership,” Dodd said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Criticized for staying on the sidelines until now, Obama for the first time voiced support for bailout legislation being drafted in Congress.

If GM wants to accept government money, then the old adage applies: he who pays the piper calls the tune.  The government demands for limits on executive pay, an end to divident payments, and preference for taxpayer equity in the company can all be avoided by turning down the big, fat check — one that the government has no business offering in the first place. No one can argue that the CEOs of automakers have a right to hang onto their jobs after bringing the companies to the brink of collapse while tooling around the nation in a luxury fleet of private jets.

What makes this objectionable is not so much the message but the messenger.  Dodd took sweetheart deals from Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo on loans that saved him tens of thousands of dollars, while Dodd chaired the Senate’s oversight of the industry.  Despite promising to open his records, Dodd still has not released the documentation for his Friends of Angelo mortgages, to which even the New York Times editorial board objected six weeks ago.

Dodd has abused his position to enrich himself at the expense of the public trust.  He is the last person in the Senate who should issue sanctimonious demands for accountability.  Thanks to his participation in protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from accountability, Dodd’s also the last person who should be shoveling out billions in taxpayer money to prop up private firms hit by the financial crisis he himself caused in large part, along with Barney Frank and the rest of Congress.

When Dodd resigns and releases his records, then we can worry about who runs GM.

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