Schumer and GM's Hydrogen Cells

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/05/schumer-and-gms-hydrogen-cells

When President Obama pronounced the U.S. government a "reluctant" shareholder of General Motors and announced, "What I have no interest in doing is running GM," Reuters (and a lot of Americans) were skeptical. Reuters ran out a story under the headline "Obama may find it tough not to meddle in GM affairs."

One politician who made no such declaration of lack of interest in running GM is Senator Schumer, the Democrat of New York. He recently announced he'd written to a top Obama aide inviting her to visit a GM plant in New York:

Today, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer announced that he has written a personal letter to Carol Browner, the Obama Administration's Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, asking her visit Honeoye Falls' GM plant to see firsthand the great work being done there and the possibilities created by hydrogen fuels cells. Last fiscal year the administration proposed a huge cut in funding for Hydrogen fuel cell research, and today Schumer said that he hoped a visit by one of the nation's top energy officials would help change the administration's stance going forward. For the FY 2010 budget, the administration advocated a 60% ($100 million) cut in the Fuel Cell Technologies program – the federal program that funds hydrogen fuel cell research. Congress restored the cuts, but Schumer said he hoped a visit by Browner would help avoid this fight in the future.

You'd think with the tens of billions of dollars that the government has already shoveled into GM, the company could fund its own hydrogen research. But this is the bailout that never ends, even after being "paid back in full."

by Ira Stoll  |  May 25, 2010 at 10:04 pm Related Topics:  Auto Industry, Energy, Government ownership, New York, Politics, President Obama, Senator Schumer receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list