America’s automobile industry has suffered tremendous losses for decades. For as long as most can remember, automakers have received hand outs from the U.S. government every few years, in order to safe themselves and their companies from bankruptcy due to increased competition from abroad and decreased sales at home.

Time and again the U.S. government has bailed those companies out, thereby allowing sick companies to function and weaken the entire economy. These companies should have been allowed to go bankrupt many years ago, for they do not strengthen the economy as a whole. Instead, they slow it down, for they cannot survive without constant government interference.

In order to survive if a free market, these automakers will have to reform and become more efficient. However, the federal government has helped them out time and again, thereby encouraging them not to push through necessary changes.

President-elect Barack Obama now seems to prepare to do exactly what his predecessors did: he promised the automobile industry during the campaign to bail them out, and repeated that promise recently.

Although this makes Obama quite popular among automakers and liberal Democrats, many of whom are owned by lobbyists for the auto industry, centrist Democrats have signalled they are not willing to help automakers out until these companies prove that they are willing to make themselves more efficient and to reform.

Moderate and fiscal conservative Republicans too have made clear they do not support a bailout at this point in time. Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney worded it as follows recently for Forbes: “Before the government issues loans to the auto industry, as has been authorized by Congress, it should insist on seeing credible and independent strategies that will return the companies to long-term sustainability. Government should not finance ongoing losses and declining market shares.”

Since Romney is considered to be one of the new leaders of the Republican Party, it seems likely that Congressional Republicans agree with Romney and follow his lead.

If Congress wants to make sure that automakers are not bailed out without “seeing credible and independent strategies that will return the companies to long-term sustainability,” it would be wise to act before Obama takes office. This is a subject on which centrist Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on with each other, meaning that they should be able to act before president Obama occupies the White House and pushes through a bailout plan for automakers.