On the recordApril 28, 2010
Last Thursday, I wrote Secretary Geithner asking why the Treasury Department allowed General Motors to use TARP money from a Treasury escrow account to repay its multibillion-dollar TARP taxpayer loan. This afternoon, I received a response from Treasury. I would like to say a few words about the reply and the questions that remain unanswered. Last week, Treasury and GM announced with press releases and nationwide TV commercials that GM had repaid its TARP loans "in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying [GM vehicles]." However, the hype does not match the reality. Taxpayers have not been repaid in full--far from it. Many billions of TARP dollars remain invested by Treasury in GM, and much of it will never be repaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will lose around $30 billion on GM. In addition, the payment that occurred last week did not come from revenue GM earned by selling cars, despite what was claimed. Instead, Treasury allowed GM to use funds in a separate escrow account to pay its TARP debt.
