GM and Chrysler are in talks with lawmakers to reach an agreement regarding the proposed closing of thousands of dealerships. This is obviously in an effort to avoid the proposed legislation that would put their plans on hot water. In case I didn’t go into this on Monday (which I don’t remember doing so) this legislation would take these close to 2,000 dealerships, and restore them to the status they had before GM or Chrysler filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday the Obama administration made it clear that they would be opposed to such legislation, even though the bill was sure to pass in the House.

The National Automobile Dealers Association has been showing up in full force to support this legislation. Their efforts seem to be working as their congressional support has been growing quickly all week. It is still unclear whether or not the measure will pass through the senate as it has only half of the votes needed to pass. We’ll see how this unfolds.

Curious about how the Cash for Guzzlers program (the one that I discussed on a couple of occasions) was panning out? According to a growing consensus, not well. The argument states that it is far to early in our economic recovery to count on a plan like this to work. The problem stated: people may own a gas guzzler that happens to be paid off, the incentive would not in any way be worth the accrued debt of buying a new car. Sounds like a pretty reasonable argument to me, but will this ever reverse the decision to implement this program? Only time will tell.

In my last post, I discussed the last report on the trend of the auto transport industryThis week, why don’t we take a look at our transportation czar. In the auto transport industry many aspects of the business are contingent upon decisions made by this person. Decisions such as which projects in the transportation sector receive funding, or rather, which projects are most important and are thus worthy of receiving funding. This is an important person for our industry, so lets go ahead and put a face behind the name.

Our current Secretary of Transportation is Ray LaHood. On January 24, he was nominated by president Obama for the position after serving as a representative of Illinois for 14 years. As Obama’s first republican nomination, many have seen his appointment as a mere ploy to demonstrate his bipartisanship. I say this because at the time of his nomination, he served on none of the house committees involving transportation (though he had before in years past). It is the opinion of some that he does not wield much influence in regards to the transportation decisions, many believe that this influence belongs to James Oberstar who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (though this can be argued both ways, I don’t feel the need to go into it). Nevertheless this position is an important one. After all, LaHood leads an agency that oversees 55,000 employees, and a 70 billion dollar budget.