Hope and change? GM reports record profits while the taxpayers take a loss on the auto industry bailout.

Today General Motors (GM), or Government Motors as it should more appropriately be called, reported the largest profit in company history during 2011.  This follows on a Treasury Department report that the taxpayer’s bailout of the automaker would result in a loss of three times that amount.

GM netted a record $7.6 billion in profits last year.  This sounds like an impressive figure but then when you have the American taxpayer funding you, it isn’t necessarily surprising.

In 2009 the American people gave GM $85 billion in the highly controversial bailout plan.  Three weeks ago the U.S. Treasury Department reported that our investment in the company is now expected to result in a loss of $23.77 billion.

How is that possible?  After all, the president and virtually every other one of our elected officials in Washington DC said we would actually make money on our bailout of GM and Chrysler.

This past June, Obama’s former Car Czar said, “As an economic recovery matter, the $10 billion plus or minus the auto intervention will cost was a great deal for American taxpayers.”

Would he say the same thing now that the number has more than doubled?  How is a loss a ‘great deal?’

Whether or not the auto industry bailout was necessary is very much up for debate.  What is not is the fact that the American people were misled.

Here’s a novel idea: Seize every bit of the profits Government Motors just reported as well as any future profits until taxpayers are paid back!

• Flashback – June 2011, Washington Post: President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout