GM’s Whitacre will pay for Washington flight out of his own pocket

As soon as we heard the General Motors’ CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. will be heading down to Washington this week, we started wondering whether he would take a plane or drive the Chevrolet Volt. Turns out, Whitacre will fly and will pay for his flight from Kansas City to Washington this afternoon out of his own pocket.

Whitacre is in Kansas City this morning at GM’s Fairfax Assembly plant where he is announcing new investments in the plants in Kansas City and the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant (more details on that later).

Whitacre will then fly to Washington to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Michigan congressional delegation. GM will also release a statement today that it has repaid U.S. and Canadian taxpayers for $5.8 billion in outstanding government loans plus $700 million in interest to the U.S. Treasury and an unspecified amount of interest to the Canadian government.

In late 2008, members of Congress embarrassed GM and Chrysler’s CEO for flying top executives to D.C. to ask for bailout money. GM dumped its corporate jets while in bankruptcy but Whitacre sometimes flies on private jets under an agreement negotiated with his former employer, AT&T.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Detroit News