Bankruptcy best answer for Chevy, Ford and Chrysler

 Contrary to the weird press conference called by Sen. Harry Reid yesterday in which the bright lights of the Democrat infrastructure in the House and Senate begged the CEOs of domestic automakers to return to Washington and make a better pitch so that legislators may give them billions of bail-out dollars, says today's editorial in the Orange County Register.

In it rests the common sense shared by most Americans: "As many critics inside and outside of the industry have long recognized, however, the Big Three need not a few layoffs and cosmetic reform, but major restructuring. The legacy costs from too-generous pension plans and wage agreements – made as if there were no effective competition – need to be reduced. Investments must be made with an eye toward a future longer-term than the next quarter. Executive perks and salaries need to be on the table.

 "The most effective vehicle for accomplishing such major restructuring would be Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which permits a company to renegotiate all kinds of obligations. Unless management is even more incompetent than we suspect, such a bankruptcy does not mean a company just disappears, but that it has an opportunity to restructure itself sufficiently to become economically viable again.

"A bailout offers no incentive to restructure; rather it offers a rationale for postponing hard decisions."

I don't know what's in the congressional bottled water to make Pelosi, Reid, Frank and Dodd believe that "bankruptcy is off the table," but I'll bet most people agree with the Orange County Register's editorial writer. Bankruptcy should not only be on the table, it might be the only real out.

For more on this, be sure to see my column in this Sunday's Review-Journal.