This is happening/has happened already Ed. The real problem is that the plans being proposed won't work, They don't go far enough to convince the American people to get behind them and that is what it is really going to take. The example - step by step - that the Big Three needs to follow has been written in history. All of these guys are familiar with that example and if they aren't they should be.
Had Rick Waggoner stood up and told Chris Dodd that if Congress would provide the financing GM had delivered it's last gas only vehicle, he would have stunned the room and then gotten a standing ovation AND the money, as much as was required, from the assembled. GM could be out taking orders for a vehicle to be named later this very day and Congress could agree to have the Treasury Dept. securitize those orders to provide the cash back to GM. It would be a self licking ice cream cone.
The examples of BK'd automakers that bit the dust won't wash either. This is a very viable possibility today because none of the examples cited represented the end of home grown auto manufacturing in the US. It also ignores the Chrysler turn around. People bought K Cars by the thousands at a time when both GM, Ford, and the media were braying publicly about orphaned vehicles built and sold by a company that wouldn't survive. Lee Iaccoca sold the press and public. The rest is now history.
See if your wife doesn't think these guys don't remind her a little of "small ball" Palin. Especially Gettlefinger. Where in hell did they find that ignorant bumpkin? I wouldn't buy a car, new OR used, from that cracker.
JC