WASHINGTON — The eight major Republican presidential candidates don’t agree on everything — but all oppose the decision by Congress and President George W. Bush to approve a $700 billion bailout fund for banks, insurance companies and the auto industry.

Republicans denounce the $85 billion bailout of the auto industry. They argue it was a giveaway to the United Auto Workers union ahead of other creditors because a union health care trust fund got large stakes in General Motors and Chrysler.

At a CNN debate in June, moderator John King asked: “Is there anyone here who, given that prospect, and President Bush started the program, given that prospect, anyone here who would have stepped in and said, ‘I don’t want to do this, but this is the backbone of American manufacturing, I’ll do something?’”

No one supported it.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly touted his unpopular decision to save General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC and made it a touchstone of his re-election strategy.

The president has visited seven Big Three auto plants since taking office — and visited Detroit on Labor Day. He has argued that Republicans were willing to let General Motors and Chrysler Group LLC fail and repeatedly said: “Don’t bet against American workers.”

Obama’s advisers were split in March 2009 over whether to save Chrysler; Obama agreed to an additional bailout for Chrysler if it tied up with Fiat SpA.

His advisers have noted the heavy toll a collapse of GM and Chrysler could have had on the Midwest. Former auto adviser Steve Rattner said Michigan could have been forced to file for bankruptcy if GM and Chrysler had liquidated.

Obama chides his opponents who weren’t willing to step in.

“There were a lot of politicians who said it wasn’t worth the time and wasn’t worth the money. In fact, there are some politicians who still say that,” he said Oct. 14 at GM’s Orion Assembly. “The investment paid off. The hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been saved made it worth it.

Republicans point to the fact that the Treasury Department estimates it will lose $14.3 billion on the auto bailouts. Others argue the administration could have taken a tougher line in crafting the bailouts.

But Chrysler repaid all of its government loans, and the government booked a $1.3 billion loss on its $12.5 billion as it completely exited.

Taxpayers have recovered $23.2 billion of the $49.5 billion GM bailout, and the Treasury cut its majority stake to 27 percent.

Republicans argue that the companies should have gone through a traditional bankruptcy, seeking funding from banks.

Bush in December 2008 provided $25 billion to GM, Chrysler and their finance arms, saying there was no other choice. “In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action,” Bush said.

In a Detroit News interview in September, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said the companies should have gone directly to bankruptcy rather than wait until 2009.

“They needed to move into a managed bankruptcy process rather than getting money up front by President Bush or President Obama,” Romney said. “They wasted a lot of money.”

Critics of Romney’s approach say automakers were unprepared for bankruptcy in late 2008 and that without immediate government help they would have been forced into an uncontrolled bankruptcy or collapse.

Ex-car czar Ron Bloom said there was no private financing available in 2009 when GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy.

A Democratic National Committee ad on the Web noted that Romney and others suggested automakers wouldn’t survive if they got government help. The ad argued that if Republicans were in charge, the headline would have read: “Detroit bankrupt.”

Romney dismissed the Obama administration’s Midwest campaign pitch touting how the auto bailout helped revive the industry. “If the Democrats are going to point to the economy as a reason to vote for the president, he’ll be out of office,” he said.

Romney, a Michigan native and son of former Michigan governor George Romney, who ran American Motors, rejected the idea that Republicans were willing to let the auto industry die.

“I’m happy to stand up next to anybody in my affection for the auto industry and my conviction that America can compete in automobiles — at home and abroad,” Romney said.

At a debate in June, ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum opposed the auto bailout, arguing the companies could have restructured “without the government putting its fingers into it.”

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman, pizza magnate Herman Cain and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman have all said they opposed the auto bailout.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Bobby Schostak said Republican candidates have talked about ways to support American manufacturing — and expects it will be a debate topic.

He said Republicans didn’t oppose bankruptcies for GM or Chrysler, but the way it was done. The government could have offered loan guarantees as it did in the 1979 Chrysler bailout, Schostak said.

He disputed that Obama should get credit for saving the companies. “What saved these companies is that they are selling brands and vehicles that people want to buy,” Schostak said.

Michigan voters aren’t interested in arguing over the auto bailout, he said. “They are looking at the future: ‘Is there a job for me?’” Schostak said. The bailout is “been there, done that. It’s time to look ahead.”

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, said it was a “no-brainer” to save the auto industry — and that Republicans will have to explain why they were willing to stand aside. “If we didn’t do what we did, we’d probably have one American auto company,” Levin said. “It was a no-brainer for Michigan and was a no-brainer for the country to keep manufacturing in this country.”

WASHINGTON – Outgoing Obama administration official Ron Bloom said Friday Detroit’s Big Three are in much better shape to weather a downturn in auto sales, and he defended a deal between auto execs and the government to double fuel efficiency standards by 2025.

Bloom, who was the president’s top auto adviser through the industry’s troubled days from July 2009 until January, said General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC are in a stronger position today than the government predicted when it launched their restructuring. Both companies went through bankruptcy, shedding debt as well as plants and workers.

“I think the companies are ahead of where we expected them to be in both cases,” Bloom said in an interview with The Detroit News. He leaves the White House on Wednesday as a adviser on manufacturing policy.

“The results are better than we had forecast. … The companies have done a better job on the cost side, on the product side, and on the pricing side. That’s all good,” he said.

Bloom said the government plans to sell its remaining 26 percent stake in GM “as soon as practicable” — it is waiting for the company’s share price to climb — and rebuffed Republicans’ suggestions that GM and Chrysler could have survived without a government bailout.

GM’s stock price has plummeted in recent weeks. It fell to $22.16 Friday — another all-time low since its public offering in November. GM shares are down 26 percent since July 22.

At current prices, the Treasury would lose more than $15 billion on its $49.5 billion GM bailout.

Last month, the government sold its remaining shares in Chrysler to Fiat SpA. The government recovered $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout.

Despite the prospect of a decline in second half auto sales, the U.S. auto industry is prepared for a downturn, Bloom said.

“The industry is far, far healthier now,” he said, adding that global competition is “vicious,” but results in better cars. “I think for the short run we’ve got an industry that’s a winner.”

Asked if the government, in hindsight, could have restructured the deals to get a larger return for taxpayers, Bloom said yes. But given the same facts in 2009, he said he would have made the same decision.

GM received $30 billion in government exit financing — but was required to repay only $6.7 billion in loans. The government converted the rest of its bailout to stock — including a 61 percent majority stake.

Some Republicans have suggested GM and Chrysler could have survived by undergoing bankruptcy without government financing. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., said the government should have provided guarantees of exit financing – and has argued the government could have saved money.

Bloom rejected that. “There was no — zero, zero, zero (debtor in possession) financing available for a company of this size,” Bloom said. “The idea that there was a free lunch solution, I think, is just really not any near reality.”

The government wasn’t sure if GM could get financing to liquidate in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. “It might have literally been shut the lights and bring in the auctioneer,” Bloom said. “That was the state of our economy.”

Bloom and other administration officials spent weeks in closed-door talks to reach agreement with nearly all automakers on a deal to double fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025. That was softer than the original 56.2 mpg proposal floated by administration officials, who also dropped requirements for light trucks from 5 percent annually to 3.5 percent from 2017-2021.

Bloom rejected criticism from Volkswagen AG that the deal tilted toward U.S. automakers and gave incentives to build more trucks, rather than cars. “We’re not trying to tell the American people to buy a car versus a truck,” he said. “We’re asking the manufacturer within that vehicle space to make those vehicles more fuel efficient. … People will decide what vehicle they need.”

He said it is cheaper to boost fuel efficiency in cars than trucks because of the special needs of trucks. “We made no special accommodation to Detroit,” Bloom said. “It happens to be that the Detroit fleets are more truck heavy. But anybody can make trucks. … I don’t think we let anybody off easy.”

Automakers praised the deal — though some in Congress, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., argue the deal shouldn’t have been hatched behind closed doors, and could cost auto sales and jobs.

The administration hasn’t declared what the additional mileage mandate will cost the industry and consumers. Bloom emphasized that projections after 2021 could change because of a midstream review to ensure the final years’ standards can be met.

“We are not irrevocably committed to any particular standard in those (final years),” he said, noting the standards could be lowered or raised.

Bloom moved to the White House early this year to focus on manufacturing as an adviser to Obama and is returning home to Pittsburgh to spend more time with his wife and two children. He routinely made the 250-mile commute home in his Ford Mustang on weekends.

“I will look for ways to be engaged in supporting the things I care about,” Bloom said, adding that he doesn’t have a new job lined up.

In an interview Friday, UAW President Bob King praised Bloom’s role in the rescue of GM and Chrysler — and the deal to hike fuel economy standards. “Ron was a key player in the whole process,” King said. He praised his role in the fuel efficiency talks, getting environmentalists, automakers and labor to all sign on. “To get all three of us together, it took a master technician and a person that really understood the industry.”

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department has raised the government’s estimate of taxpayer losses due to the auto bailout by more than $400 million to $14.33 billion.

Earlier this summer, the Treasury had pared its loss estimate to $13.91 billion on its $85 billion bailout of General Motors Co., Chrysler Group LLC and auto finance companies according to The Detroit News.

Overall, the Treasury Department hiked its estimates that it will lose $36.7 billion on its $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, including the value of some AIG shares.

That’s up from an earlier estimate of $29.6 billion.

A Treasury spokesman didn’t immediately comment on the reason for the change in the estimate.

The new estimate, posted late last week on a government’s website, is as of June 30 and doesn’t include a recent falloff in the price of GM stock.

In July, the value of the government’s stake fell by $1.34 billion. At current prices, the government would lose more than $13 billion on its GM rescue.

The government has recovered about $23.1 billion of its $49.5 billion bailout of GM and still holds a 26 percent stake — or 500 million shares — after it shed about half of its majority stake.

The government lost $1.3 billion on its $12.5 billion bailout of Chrysler Group LLC and completely exited its bailout of the Auburn Hills automaker in July. Fiat SpA now holds a majority stake in Chrysler.

The government’s efforts to shrink more of its GM stock and part of its majority stake in Detroit-based lender Ally Financial Inc. have been hampered by the weak overall stock markets.

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to raise $5 billion as part of a $6 billion offering when Ally becomes publicly traded. The Treasury Department owns a controlling 74 percent stake in Ally as part of the $17.2 billion bailout during the financial crisis.

About $126 billion of the $470 billion used in the Troubled Asset Relief Program is outstanding. The losses include $46 billion used by Treasury for housing programs.

WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday that taxpayers could lose roughly $14 billion of the money spent on auto industry bailouts, despite the industry’s recent recovery.

The White House cites the potential losses in a report, “The Resurgence of the American Automotive Industry,” released ahead of President Barack Obama’s trip Friday to a Chrysler Group LLC facility in Toledo, Ohio.

The report said that of the $80 billion in bailout money supplied to the auto industry, less than 20 percent, or $16 billion, ultimately may be lost, reported The Wall Street Journal. That’s down from the 60 percent loss projected two years ago, the report said. The White House’s top auto and manufacturing adviser, Ron Bloom, later specified the loss at closer to $14 billion.

While “there is no joy” in acknowledging that loss, the bailout succeeded in saving jobs and preventing a broader industry collapse, Mr. Bloom said.

“So while we are obviously extremely conscious of our obligation to get every penny we can for the taxpayer, we’re also not going to apologize for the fact that there are literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans who are working today” because of the bailouts, he said.

The U.S. could lose more than $10 billion in General Motors Co. alone if the government sold its remaining shares of the auto maker at current share prices.

The Obama administration has signaled it wants to divest its remaining GM shares within the next few months. Under terms of GM’s November initial public offering, the U.S. Treasury could begin selling additional shares of its GM holdings as of late last month. Mr. Bloom said Wednesday the administration has not settled on a price or date for selling its remaining shares, but said the administration may accept a loss.

“The president has made clear that he does not believe that is the proper role of government in the long term to be an owner of a private corporation,” Mr. Bloom said. “And so we do not view ourselves as kind of market timer looking for the absolute best opportunity to sell.”

The White House report said the money invested in GM and Chrysler ultimately saved the government tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs, including the cost of unemployment insurance and lost tax receipts that the government would have incurred had the big Detroit auto makers collapsed. Since GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy, the industry has created 115,000 jobs, its strongest period of growth since the late 1990s, the report said.

Mr. Obama’s Toledo trip and the White House report are part of a broader Democratic effort to turn the industry bailout into a political advantage, particularly in Midwestern states that were hit hard by the recession and could provide key support for the president’s re-election bid in 2012.

Treasury still holds 6 percent of Chrysler and is in discussions now to sell its remaining shares to Italian auto maker Fiat SpA, which now controls the Auburn Hills, Mich., auto maker. Fiat said last Friday that it hopes to exercise an option to buy the Treasury’s remaining shares within 10 days.

The White House report also comes as the U.S. industry’s sales have hit a lull. U.S. auto sales declined in May, in only the second significant slide since the fall of 2009, as short supplies, higher prices and economic worries weighed on demand, auto companies said Wednesday.

While most of the government’s money flowed to GM and Chrysler as they underwent bankruptcy reorganizations, auto finance and parts suppliers also received aid.

WASHINGTON – The panel overseeing the $700 billion fund that was used to rescue Wall Street financial institutions and the U.S. auto industry says the jury is still out on whether the auto industry was salvaged for the long-term by the taxpayer-funded bailout, reported The Detroit News.

In a final report released today, the bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel, which has monitored the bailout for more than two years, said it will be difficult to determine the success of the $85 billion auto rescue “since Treasury has never clearly stated its goals in assisting the companies.”

“The domestic automotive industry was trending downward before the financial crisis hit and it is unclear whether the (bailout) will ultimately reverse that trend in the long term,” the panel said in its 236-page report.

The government once predicted taxpayers would lose more than $40 billion on the rescue — $25 billion of which was approved by President George W. Bush and $60 billion by the Obama administration — but has reduced its loss estimate to $17 billion.

Of the $700 billion authorized by Congress for the overall bailout, $389 billion was dispersed to banks, insurers and automakers. The Congressional Budget Office predicted in November that the government would lose $25 billion from the three industries, down from its initial $356 billion estimate.

Tim Massad, the Treasury official who oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that without the auto bailout, “We would have uncontrolled liquidations in the U.S. auto industry that could have resulted in another million jobs lost.”

He noted that GM last year posted its first annual profit, $6.2 billion, since 2004. Chrysler reported an operating profit for 2010 and Ford Motor Co., which didn’t get a government handout, reported $6.6 billion in profits.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this was a success,” Massad said. “All anyone needs to do is ask autoworkers in Michigan or Ohio. Ask the CEOs.”

But the report said the decision to rescue automakers raises the prospect that other big companies will take undue risks, counting on a government bailout if things go badly.

“The mere fact that Treasury intervened in the automotive industry, rescuing companies that were not banks and were not particularly interconnected within the financial system, extended the ‘too big to fail’ guarantee,” the report said.

“The implication may seem to be that any company in America can receive a government backstop, so long as its collapse would cost enough jobs or deal enough economic damage.”

But Massad noted that Congress passed financial reform legislation, which gives the government the power to liquidate troubled financial firms.

The oversight panel has been critical of the Treasury for, among other things, failing to exercise its ownership rights to direct the affairs of General Motors Co. and Ally Financial Inc., a primary auto financing source. The panel also questioned the decision to give Ally — formerly known as GMAC — a $17.2 billion bailout and criticized the government’s early sale of its interest in Chrysler Financial, saying it lost $600 million.

At current share prices, the U.S. government would lose $9.8 billion on its $49.5 billion bailout of GM. It holds a 33 percent in the automaker.

GM spokesman Greg Martin said the Detroit-based automaker is looking forward.

“We’re a new company with a bright future,” Martin said. “Our long term prospects will remain strong if we remember past lessons, but more importantly, if we keep our energy and focus straight ahead on the customer and creating shareholder value.”

The Government Accountability Office and the TARP special inspector general’s office are reviewing aspects of the auto bailout and are expected to issue reports later this year.