GM CEO Mary Barra testified before a Senate subcommittee today. She agreed to come back after the company's investigation is complete.
Facing an aggressive group of U.S. Senators on Capitol Hill today, General Motors CEO Mary Barra clung to many of the responses she gave to a similar House subcommittee yesterday during testimony about the recall of more than 2.5 million vehicles for a faulty ignition switch.
Members of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance were in attack mode while questioning Barra accusing GM of engaging in a cover up of the faulty part, while others asked Barra how the company could ever be trusted again by the American public and if the vehicles shouldn’t be taken off the roads.
Barra remained composed throughout the hearing, which lasted more than two hours.
In her opening statement, Barra reiterated her stance that today’s GM is a different company than the one that more than a decade ago compromised customer safety when it allowed a below-spec part to be used in its ignition switches that are linked to at least 13 deaths and 31 crashes.
Barra defended the company’s actions for the time she has been CEO noting the company attempted to move quickly to corral the problem and it recalled all of the vehicles affected as expeditiously as possible. She expressed faith in the replacement parts that would be used in the repair of the recall vehicles as well as company’s guidelines for driving the unrepaired vehicles.
She told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has been highly critical of the automaker and was one of the first proponents of the maker setting up a fund for victims, she would allow her son to drive the recalled vehicles that have not been repaired as long as he followed the recommendations the automaker made.
Blumenthal and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told Barra that GM should simply take all of the vehicles off the road. Boxer went further in her criticism of GM and Barra.
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“If this is the new GM, I’m not impressed,” she said. “I am very disappointed. Really as a woman to a woman, I’m very disappointed. Really disappointed because the culture you are representing today is a culture of the status quo.”
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Barra clarified her position on what information the company would share from its internal investigation headed up by former U.S. Attorney General Anthony Valuskas. She agreed to share any information related to safety, but would not make public competitive issues or anything that could violate privacy laws. She also agreed to testify again before the committee once the investigation is complete.
(To see how GM’s Barra handled her first subcommittee hearing, Click Here.)
She also declined to commit to setting up a compensation fund, saying the company will explore all possibilities to do what’s right “and be thoughtful” of the families of 13 victims killed as a result of the faulty part. Barra said the company is meeting with Kenneth Feinberg – who oversaw victims’ compensation funds for the 9/11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing and the BP Gulf oil spill to “explore and evaluate options” for a compensation fund, on Friday to begin the process of determining its next steps.