Big Three Ain’t Too Proud to Beg

The CEOs of the Big Three automakers were back on Capitol Hill yesterday rattling the tin cup. Like the welfare queens of yore, they traveled to DC in style.

The CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew in separately on their $35 million private jets to beg Congress for a $25 billion bailout. They claim they’re running out of cash.

But some want to run them off the road. Rep. Gary Ackerman castigated them for their profligacy:

There’s a delicious irony of seeing private luxury jets flying into DC, and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. Kind makes you a little bit suspicious as to whether or not…we’ve seen the future. There’s a message there. Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled to get here? It would have at least sent the message that you do get it.

Michael Moore, writer, producer and director of “Roger and Me,” skewered the less than dynamic trio on CNN’s "Larry King Live."

Moore continued:

They don’t believe in free enterprise or free market. They want socialism for themselves. They want a handout and a net for themselves. To hell with everybody else, but give it to them.

ABC News’ Brian Ross broke the story of the corporate excess. He told King:

This is the way all three of the CEOs live. They talked about sacrifices. They talked about the sacrifice of laying off tens of thousands of their workers. They’re not talking about their own sacrifices…For a company that says it’s running out of cash, it seems incongruous.

It’s indeed incongruous to ask taxpayers, who have to pay for a bottle of water on a cramped commercial plane, to bail out auto execs who are cut from the same fine cloth as AIG executives.

Consider: a new Rasmussen poll found that Americans have flipped the script. Forty-eight percent think the failure of General Motors would be good for the country.

With the cancellation of the Senate vote, the wheels are coming off the Big Three's attempt to gas up at the public pump.