Robert Gibbs

“ But here's -- here's what I think the President was very clear about saying in front of Congress, which was we need a strengthened, retooled and restructured and re-imagined auto industry in this country. Whether the auto industry as we have it now is exactly what we have in a year is something I think is going to be determined by a lot of different factors. ”

“ But understand this, Chuck, that we all saw the auto sales figures either earlier this -- I think they were earlier this week or late last week -- shows real steep drops in year-to-year auto purchases -- so much so that now Toyota, a company that most used to hold up as a model for other auto companies, asked the Japanese government for help, because right now the number of cars -- we're basically on an annual sales track of about 8 million -- 8 to 9 million cars. You know, obviously in the -- in very strong years, it's not uncommon to see 15 million cars sold. ”

“ But there's no doubt that we have a long way to go to get this economy moving again, and the jobs numbers are one more reminder of that.
[REPORTER] : Robert, why not say we are not going to let the U.S. auto industry -- we're not going to let GM go bankrupt? ”

“ Well, I mean, you know, let's -- I think if -- I think on that scale, you'd never even undertake -- you'd never even undertake any action to seek cuts in wasteful spending unless you saved trillions of dollars with the stroke of one pen. ”