The former head of President Barack Obama's auto task force acknowledged yesterday that he instructed General Motors not to commit money to a pension fund for some former employees during the automaker's 2009 bankruptcy, Reuters reported today. "We concluded it was not commercially reasonable," Steven Rattner, who directed the bailout of the auto sector during the height of the nation's financial crisis, told a U.S. House of Representatives hearing. Republican lawmakers have criticized the decision as an example of overly deep meddling by the Obama administration in private business matters. The government plans to exit GM by early 2014. Taxpayers are likely to lose billions of dollars on the bailout. Rattner and other members of the task force defended their decisions, telling lawmakers that their job was to ultimately make sure GM emerged from bankruptcy as a viable company.
