Right now the Obama team is swearing up and down that General Motors is only going to be a government property for a short time - a few years, at the most. But there’s nothing harder to kill than a federal program. There’s already plenty of evidence that both the White House and Congressional leaders view GM as a jobs program, rather than a company. In my column at American Issues Project, I argue that GM today looks a lot like Amtrak did in 1971:

Now that the Obama administration has taken General Motors under its wing, it’s worth wondering what the exit strategy is. How quickly will the federal government sell its stake in the company, and recover the tens of billions it has loaned GM? It would be nice to think the intervention may be temporary, but the America’s history with federal intervention into the private market is not especially encouraging.

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Way to go, General Motors! You’ve staked your survival on electric cars, hybrid cars, and high-mileage cars - apparently reading tea leaves and thinking that was what Obama and Congressional Democrats wanted. Instead, it turns out Barack Obama thinks you did it all wrong. Even more surprising, it’s GM’s high-tech, environmentally-friendly, crown jewel car of the future that was your biggest mistake.

The Chevrolet Volt may wow the media when it arrives in dealerships next year, but the Obama administration believes the plug-in electric car will cost too much and won’t attract enough buyers.

“While the Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term,” the administration said in its evaluation of General Motors Corp.’s restructuring plan. The car “is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable.”

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