3 Auto Salesmen Seek Federal Bailout

Three auto salesmen from three different domestic automobile dealerships at the Tustin Auto Center in Tustin, California today appeared before Congress to seek bailouts, due to the collapse of the market for new and used domestic automobiles.

"I guess I'll be going back to prison because aside from selling Chevrolets I have no other marketable skills," Ron Hausner, 37, of Chino, California told a hastily assembled Senate Subcommittee on Domestic Cars And Other Stuff.

"I haven't sold a Ford in seven weeks," Fred Blippinger, 43, told Congress. "I'm behind on alimony to all three of my ex-wives and I'm down to 117 pounds."

"A lot of folks are surprised to discover Chrysler still makes cars," Tom Schupnaker, 52, told Congress. "My response is, until they sell a few, maybe Chrysler ought to slow down a tad."

Hausner, Blippinger, and Schupnaker all have accepted reduced salaries "until things turn around," Blippinger said. He told Congress he now works for cigarettes "and the right to sleep in a Ford Explorer that's been sitting on the lot since Spring."

Hausner now earns $1.17 an hour, he said, due to an exemption for car dealers in the California minimum wage.

"If I go back to Pelican Bay, it won't be that big a pay cut," Hausner told Congress. "Plus I get three meals and a bed."

Schupnaker told Congress that he, like the CEOs of Ford, Chrysler, and GM, would "forswear using private jets until our stock price regains its 2006 levels, as long as I can get enough money to take the Greyhound back to Orange County."