DETROIT - General Motors Corp. is planning to temporarily close most of its U.S. factories for up to nine weeks this summer because of slumping sales and growing inventories of unsold vehicles, two people briefed on the plan said Wednesday.

The exact dates of the closures are not known, but both people said they will occur around the normal two-week shutdown in July to change from one model year to the next. Neither person wanted to be identified because workers have not been told of the shutdowns.

GM spokesman Chris Lee would not comment other than to say the company notifies employees before making any production cuts public.

From the beginning of this Auto Bailout situation I felt that it reeked of good ol' fashioned union busting.  Huge financial institutions got obscene amounts of money.  Congress barely batted an eyelash giving AIG $150 BILLION.  But when the last bastion of American manufacturing came before Congress all of a sudden lines were being drawn in the sand.  Now do not get me wrong, the CEOs of the Big Three ran their companies into the ground.  They did this by any number of reasons.  All of the reasons however mainly tie into the fact that they had the combined creativity of a slug.  Forget higher fuel mileage, Hummers and SUVs for all!!!  Despite this however, GM is too big to fail.

Watching conservative Republican Senators "negotiate" with the UAW some months back made me pretty damn angry.  As usual the only Republican plan was to cut wages and benefits.  If this did not happen the GOP was ready to stand back and watch auto manufacturing in this country die.  I remember thinking to myself that if they wanted to play hardball, let's play.  Let's have around 800,000 jobs disappear over night.  Go ahead, see what happens. 

Well, GM has managed to limp on to this point but it appears they are on the brink of being finished.  I do not see how Congress can let them fail.  The consequences are too big.