An AP article, posted a little over an hour ago, reports on the Senate’s failure to bail out the U.S. auto industry. Even if your job is not directly related to the U.S. auto industry, what happens can have a big impact on your economic future and your retirement account. For more information about that, read the post just below this one.

The Democratic leaders in the Senate are reluctant to back any plans to bail out the auto industry, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s support for helping the ailing auto industry.

A few Senators are getting this right. . . . .

“The White House and congressional Republicans instead called on Democrats to sign on to a GOP plan to divert a $25 billion loan program created by Congress in September — designed to help the companies develop more fuel-efficient vehicles — to meet the auto giants’ immediate financial needs.

“Voinovich and Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., along with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, were at work on that measure Wednesday, trying to placate skeptical Democrats by including a guarantee that the fuel-efficiency loan fund would ultimately be replenished.”

George Voinovich is once again one of the good guys (see the Oct 20 post where Voinovich was one of the good guys when the Senate Repiublican leaders (and not a few Democrats) blew their chance in 2005 to head off the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis).

” ‘If GM is telling us the truth, they go into bankruptcy and you see a cascade like you have never seen,’ said Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, who was working on one rescue plan Wednesday. ‘If people want to go home and not do anything, I think that they’re going to have that on their hands.’ “

Meanwhile the White House is sitting on its hands while one of the most vital of American industries is on the verge of collapse, threatening a major downfall in the U.S. economy. Shame on the White House.

Read the whole AP news article here.