Former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin, who was Republican chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee when he and Mr. Upton led the Firestone tire investigation, said Mr. Upton was a tough fact-finder in 2000 and let the information that emerged guide the committee toward a new law. Both GM and the agency can expect equally tough treatment, he said, and Upton sees auto safety rules as helpful to auto sales.
‘Déjà vu'
“It's like deja vu all over again,” Mr. Tauzin said. “We thought we cured all the problems, but obviously he's got to take another look at it.”
The ignition switch flaw, which GM now says its engineers discovered in 2001 while developing the Ion, has spurred the auto maker's biggest crisis since its 2009 bankruptcy and government bailout. Documents show GM was aware as long ago as 2001 that the switches could slip out of position, cutting off power. Ms. Barra said March 18 she learned about an analysis of the stalling cars in December, weeks before she become CEO, and that she was informed of the decision to recall cars on Jan. 31.
Ms. Barra apologized for the lives lost and said there would be “no sacred cows” in GM's investigation.
She is scheduled to appear with acting NHTSA Administrator David Friedman at hearings set for the week of March 31.
Earlier notification
“We're going to be ready to share all the information we can with Congress,” Mr. Friedman told reporters after a speech last week in Washington.
Mr. Upton said he has plenty of questions for both sides.
“The most troubling thing is that it appears these cases were identified as early as 2001,” he said in the interview. “It's 2014 now. I first learned about it reading USA Today two or three weeks ago. No earlier clues or earlier notification. It appears that there could have been hundreds of cases.”
While Mr. Upton has no GM facilities in his southwest Michigan district, he is often an advocate for the car industry's positions. He's a former co-chair of the Congressional Automotive Caucus, one of 32 House Republicans to back auto industry bailout legislation in 2008 and a longtime opponent of higher fuel economy standards for cars.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, Mr. Upton's campaigns have received $73,750 from the political action committee of GM and individual company employees since 1989, though that's dwarfed by the $111,050 from the PAC and workers for Ford Motor Co., his largest donor in that period.
Polarized climate
A top question as the probe begins is whether the polarized climate in Congress will make it tougher to build the type of consensus that helped the TREAD Act win unanimous approval in both the House and Senate. It was signed into law less than three months after Firestone announced the recall.
A onetime White House aide and the grandson of one of the founders of Whirlpool Corp., he is the wealthiest member of the Michigan delegation, and was long regarded as that group's most centrist Republican, said Bill Ballenger, founder of Inside Michigan Politics, a newsletter in Lansing, Mich.
Yet after winning his 2010 Republican primary against a more conservative challenger with just 57 percent of the vote — and enduring attacks from the tea party-aligned groups such as the Club for Growth — Mr. Upton shifted. It helped him to fend off his 2010 primary challenger, former Michigan state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, in a 2012 rematch with 67 percent of the vote.
Light bulbs
The political shift includes what Mr. Ballenger calls “ridiculous” moves like voting in 2011 to repeal a law banning incandescent light bulbs that Mr. Upton had championed four years earlier. Mr. Ballenger said Mr. Upton also has used his committee chairmanship — gained after Republicans took the House in 2011 — to embarrass President Barack Obama's administration on issues such as the 2010 healthcare law at least as often as he's worked on bipartisan bills.
The current GM probe “gives Upton a chance to go back to being a good old-fashioned committee chairman, and conduct himself in a statesman-like, civil way without worrying about right-wingers lambasting him,” Mr. Ballenger said in an interview.
Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the panel's top Democrat, said the GM recall investigation is so far proceeding on a bipartisan basis. He said if the committee considers new auto safety legislation, he and Mr. Upton probably can add it to their bipartisan accomplishments.
“I have a high regard for Chairman Upton,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview. “We've been able to pass some legislation even though Congress looks like it's deadlocked on everything.”
Boost penalties
As the GM probe advances, a key matter that may divide lawmakers is whether to boost penalties under the TREAD Act. The current law has maximum civil penalties of $35 million and a maximum criminal penalty of 15 years in prison.
Ms. Claybrook said the civil penalties are but a “fly speck” to companies the size of GM, which reported $155 billion in revenue for 2013, according to data complied by Bloomberg. The fines should be lifted to a maximum of $300 million, and companies should no longer be able to shirk criminal liability by coming back later to disclose defects that should have been reported earlier.
“We need to give the TREAD Act more muscle,” said Clarence Ditlow, president of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based research group that has been tracking recalls and defects since it was founded by Ralph Nader in 1970.
Toyota accord
Mr. Upton said he'll let the hearings determine whether various penalties should be lifted, although he insisted “they're pretty high” already. He cited last week's agreement by Toyota Motor Corp. to pay a $1.2 billion penalty to end a U.S. criminal probe into sudden unintended acceleration of vehicles after a 10 million-car recall.
Mr. Tauzin said the partisan divide in Congress weighs against a repeat of the swift agreement on legislation seen in 2000 after the Bridgestone-Firestone tire recall.
During the 2000 recall, Mr. Upton and other lawmakers acted at a time of urgency, as the number of deaths related to tire defects mounted as they were drafting the bill and an annual congressional adjournment loomed. Mr. Upton, who was then chairman of the panel's investigations subcommittee, sped the measure's passage by negotiating with the Senate even as he wrote the House version and let the House Judiciary Committee insert criminal penalties without its own hearings.
“To be honest, I think it could be a harder pull this year,” Mr. Tauzin said.
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This Bloomberg News Service report appeared on autonews.com, the website of Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.
