>> what is your conviction that something like that can happen in this environment? >> it's hard. it's a very challenging environments i can't make any promises in terms of how that would work out but i'm just saying there are variables of overlap in areas that people can start to work on and deals like the deal we are seeing our signals in a sense that reform is probably warranted. >> in the actions of reform do expect to see more conversion bills like this and are they acceptable to the united states government and american companies that are going offshore in an effort to lower the tax base?

i now convene this hearing of the oversight and investigation subcommittee entitled the gm ignition switch recall investigation update. i thiank my colleagues and

presenters for being here. ms. barra, when you were before this committee almost three months ago you could not answer many of the subcommittee's questions about why it took general motors years to figure out why the air bags in the cobalts, ions, hhrs were not deploying when they should have. it took gm years before finally issuing a safety recall. now mr. valucas has made public his report on the gm fiasco in which he concludes it doesn't appear to be a case of a coverup or a conspiracy. instead, according to mr. valukas's report gm's failure to recall faulty vehicles was a case of incompetence and neglect. perhaps this report should have been subtitled don't assume malfeasance when incompetence will do. i still have questions about whether gm employees knowingly withheld information during previous liability lawsuits. information that could have led to an earlier recall and prevented some of these tragedies from occurring.

in many ways the facts surrou surrounding what finally resulted in the gm recall are far more troubling than a cover up. gm attorneys and engineers given the facts on stalls and air bag malfunctions and who were tasked with figuring out what went wrong did not connect the dots. that's because they were either incompetent or intentionally indifferent. today i want to know from both ms. barra and mr. valukas not just how it happened, but why did this happen. even when a good law like the tread act of 2000 is in place, it requires people to use common sense, value a moral code, and have a motivation driven by compassion for it to be effective. here the key people at gm seemed to lack all of these in a way that underscores that we cannot legislate common sense, mandate morality, more litigate compassion. at some point it's up to the culture of the company that has to go beyond paperwork and rules. the failures at general motors were ones of accountability and culture. if employees do not have the moral fiber to do the right

thing and do not have the awareness to recognize when mistakes are being made, then the answer must be to change the people or change the culture. that's a lesson another large organization under congressional scrutiny should have also taken heart. i hope officials from the veterans affairs department are watching. what is particularly frustrating about gm is that the company appeared in no great hurry to figure out the problems with its vehicles. despite customer complaints, reports from gm's own engineers that they were able to turn off the ignition switch with their knees during test drives, and finally reports of deaths, it was not until 2009 that gm figured out the airbags had any connection to the power mode status of the car. then it took another four years to link that finding to one of the components that determines the power mode. the ignition switch. and that discovery was not a result of gm's own investigative work but raised in the course of a lawsuit brought by the family of a young woman who died behind the wheel of a cobalt. how was this discovered?

an investigator for the family simply took two ignition switches apart and compared them. something gm failed to do during over seven years of investigations into the mystery of cobalt airbag nondeployment. ms. barra, you sought this internal investigation of the ignition switch recall and you have publicly acknowledged how troubling its findings are. your company has cooperated with this committee investigation, and i thank you for that. you have taken corrective action by changing procedures and trying to remove roadblocks to make sure safety concerns come to light. base ed on this report, though, there are no easy fixes for the kind of systemic cultural breakdowns and fundamental misunderstoodings that permitted gm engineers not to suspect a safety problem when cobalts were stalling due to a faulty ignition switch. the possibility that these problems are pervasive and cultural deeply concerns me. concerns us all. we learned monday that gm has announced yet another recall. it's 39th since january. this one is hauntingly similar to the cobalt ignition switch

recall. the ignition switch in certain buicks, chevies and add lacks inadvertently moves out of the run position if the key has too much weight on it, causing the car to lose power and stall. model years for the recalled vehicles goes back to the year 2000. mr. valukas, your report tells us about the engineering and legal findings with gm, but what it doesn't divulge is whether gm attorneys made conscious decisions during discovery in other product liability lawsuits that prevented the truth from coming out sooner and potentially saving lives. that kind of malfeasance should be the crux of a coverup. i want to delve deeper into that issue today and find out if that occurred. a harder question to answer and for you, ms. barra, to solve is to why this happened. we know engineers approved a part that did not meet gm specifications. why? was it a cost concern? was it a rush to get a car off the road? was it just sloppy? when complaints were raised about cobalts' ignition switch almost as soon as the car was on the road why did the engineers

not diagnose stalling as a safety problem? again, was in a lack of basic education about how the car worked or is it something less specific but more difficult to address? a culture that does not respect accountability and that does not take responsibility for problems. when investigations drifted for years, there seems to be little or no evidence to suggest that this troubled anyone. some of this is undoubtedly poor information sharing and silos. and a failure to properly document change orders. but why didn't anyone at gm ask, we have known for years we have an airbag system that isn't working when it should, when are we going to do something about it. ms. barra and mr. valukas, i thank you for being here today. i look forward to your testimony. i turn to ms. defete for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, we're still trying to unravel the facts that led to one of the worst automotive tragedies of the last decade. that's the installation of these faulty ignition switches in gm vehicles that we now have -- know has caused over a dozen deaths. these switches were bad from the

start. they should have never been installed. and once they were installed, it became quickly clear to gm officials that something was very, very wrong with them. disturbingly, the company left these unsafe vehicles on the road for over a decade. mr. valukas, you have done important work describing how a defect known to gm employees for over a decade went unaddressed for so long. this report paints a troubling picture of gm's culture and commitment to safety that allowed this tragedy to take place. it describes engineering and investigative failures, a lack of urgency in addressing issues, poor communication within the company and numerous other systemic problems. and in the end, the company failed to inform customers and federal regulators of the deadly problem. but the report, unfortunately, does not answer all of the key questions. it does not fully explain how the ignition switch was approved

without meeting specifications, and then how it was redesigned in 2006. it does not fully explain why stalling was not considered a safety issue within gm. and, most troubling, as the chairman alluded to, the report does not fully explain how this dysfunctional company culture took root and pertisistpersiste. the report singles out many individuals at gm who made poor decisions or failed to act, but it doesn't identify one individual in a position of high leadership who was responsible for these systemic failures. the report absolves previous ceos, the legal department, ms. barra, and the gm board from knowing about the tragedy beforehand. this is nothing to be proud of. that the most senior gm executives may not have known about a defect that caused more than a dozen deaths is frankly alarming, and does not absolve them of responsibility for this tragedy. ms. barra, while you are a new

ceo, you have a decades' long history with gm. from 2011, you were executive vice president of global product development. and the gm staff responsible for vehicle safety reported either directly or through a chain of command to you. at least one high-level executive who was working on solutions to the ignition switch problem reported directly to you. so while you may not have known about this defect, many people who worked for you did. the culture of a company is shaped by its senior leadership. they set the tone and shape the attitudes of the employees. they are also responsible for putting in place systems to foster transparency and ensure that safety issues are taken seriously. those systems failed at gm. today, what i want to know are specific answers to how the culture of secrecy at gm can be changed to encourage reporting of problems, not just structural

management changes. i appreciate, ms. barra, the changes you've made at gm so far. but i think the jury is still out on whether we can have success in changing the culture. last week as the chairman mentioned, gm announced the recall of over 500,000 late model chevy camaros, including 2014 model year vehicles, because of ignition switch problems. and monday evening, just a couple days ago, another 3.3 million cars with ignition switch and engine shutoff issues were recalled. including chevy impalas that are currently in production. this means that this year alone, gm has announced 44 recalls affecting more than 20 million vehicles worldwide. ms. barra, this record reinforces the notion that the safety problems with the cobalt and ion were not unique at gm and that the senior executives at the company, including you, should have acted sooner to

resolve the company's culture. so now we need to see, we need to show the american public that the changes that have been announced will really address the long standing problems at gm. mr. chairman, ms. barra is not the only one with work to do. this committee should get to work on legislation to address the findings of our investigation. and in these last few minutes, i also want to acknowledge the families who are here in the hearing room today and their beloved loved ones with the pictures on the back wall there. i know it's not easy for you to learn about so many things that went wrong at gm. you have my word that we'll do our best to make sure that this kind of tragedy will never, never happen again. and, mr. chairman, i know that we can work together in a bipartisan way to do that. thank you. >> thank you. gentle lady's time has expired. i recognize chairman of the full committee, mr. upton, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ms. barra, we all thank you for

returning to the committee today as you said you would. three months ago, we held our first hearing on the gm ignition switch recall. we asked a lot of tough questions, but we got only a few answers. i expect things to go differently today. we had the valukas report in hand and we have its words seared in our minds. our investigation tracks with the findings of the report of maddening and deadly breakdown over a decade, plagued by missed opportunities and disconnects. engineers didn't comprehend how their cars o p rated or how vehicle systems were linked together. a company believed a car that stalled while driving wasn't necessarily a safety concern. investigators let investigations drift for years, despite having proof right before their eyes that an airbag system wasn't deploying when it should have. and all of this existed in a bureaucratic culture where employees avoided taking responsibility with a nod of the head. ms. barra, you have said you found the report deeply

troubling as well. i find it very disturbing and downright devastating to you, to gm, to folks in michigan who live and breathe pride in the auto industry, but most of all to the families of the victims. the recall announced on monday this week makes it painfully clear that this is not just a cobalt problem. a new set of vehicles including multiple chevrolet, cadillac, buick models are facing an ignition switch recall for the very same kind of torque problem that lurked for over a decade in the cobalt and similar small vehicles with fatal consequences for unsuspecting drivers, including two teens from my own community. ms. barra, mr. valukas, many questions today will focus on how and why this happened. i intend to focus on how we can make sure it never happens again. a culture that allowed safety problems to fester for years will be hard to change. but if gm is going to recover and regain the public's trust,

it has to learn from this report and break the patterns that led to this unimaginable systemic breakdown. i want specifics on whether the changes you've already put in place really have made a difference. with the valukas report gm has provided an assessment of what went wrong. i want to be clear today that our information does continue. this committee has reviewed over 1 million pages of documents and interviewed key personnel from gm and ntsa. while we're addressing gm's actions in response today we will address ntsa's part of the story in the near future. we don't yet have all the answers about what changes in our laws, the regulators' practices or the company's culture would have prevented this safety defect from lingering so long or harming so many. but we're going to find out. yes, we will. the system failed and people died, and it could have been prevented. i yield the balance of my time to dr. burgess. >> i thank the chairman of the full committee for yielding. we now know this is not an

evidence problem. the evidence is simply overwhelming. it's an analysis problem. general motors still needs to answer the fundamental question of how it missed all of these glaring signs. indeed, failure to recognize the problems in a timely fashion may well have cost 13 people their lives. this report is deeply troubling. maybe the most concerning aspect of the report is the simple recognition, while everyone at general motors have responsibility to fix the problem, no one took responsibility. that's unacceptable for one of america's flagship companies and one that millions of us rely upon every day. now, according to the report by mr. valukas, he offers 90 recommendations as to the problems and their failures that led to the ignition recall. i'm certain that all 90 are crucial. but really only one, accountability, and accountability that is not

transferable, is crucial. if personal accountability is missing, as the report here suggests, then disastrous consequences will not only occur, they will reoccur and reoccur. ms. barra, mr. valukas, i thank you for being here in our committee today. the valukas report is a start. it's the first step to solving a problem. by identifying it. i hope also there are some answers for many of us as to the effect of now the understanding of the problem and when the understanding occurred. will this affect those cases that have already been litigated? how does general motors' bankruptcy affect its position on those cases that were previously litigated? and perhaps we can even touch on mr. feinberg's employment. is he an employee of gm, or is he working for the crash victims? all of these questions need to be answered today. i look forward to your testimony, and thank you.

>> gentleman yields back. now i recommend -- now recognize ms. schakowsky for five minutes. >> i thank you, mr. chairman, for holding this hearing. the second on the failure to recall defective gm vehicles in a timely manner. i thank our witnesses for being here. as i said at our first hearing on this issue, the families of the victims of gm's defective vehicles deserved better. gm failed you. we're looking at those pictures in the back of the room, and they need more than an apology. on june 5th, mr. valukas, who is well known in chicago where i come from and well respected there, reviewed gm's ignition switch failures, and his report was released on june 5th. the report characterized gm as a company with a convoluted structure and very little accountability. a place where there was an institutional failure to communicate and coordinate both within and between different

departments. there's a story today in bloomberg business week about a whistle blower who apparently tried to bring these problems to the attention of the company and lost his job as a result. during her previous appearance before the subcommittee, ms. barra repeatedly pointed to the importance of the valukas report in addressing the many questions that she was not able to answer. i look forward to getting answers to those questions today. a question i raised at our last hearing has yet to be answered to my satisfaction. and that's how gm will compensate those who were injured or who lost loved ones in crashes prior to gm's bankruptcy in 2009. ms. barra said that it would take her and kenneth feinberg, who was selected to advise gm on options of how to establish a victims compensation fund, up to 60 days. from 30 to 60 days from the time of the first hearing to determine how to proceed with those claims. that first hearing was april t

1st. it's now been 79 days. so i hope we'll get the answers today. as ms. barra said, when the valukas report became public, quote, we failed these customers, and we must face up to it and we must learn from it, unquote. while 15 gm employees have been dismissed, it's not clear to me that any senior-level manager has been held responsible for the gm corporate culture that allowed the ignition switch defect to go unaddressed for years after it was first discovered in 2001. the question now is how far accountability extends at gm. as executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply from 2011 until taking over last year as ceo, ms. barra, my understanding is was responsible for safety issues at the company. the valukas report suggests the senior management at gm was unaware until 2013 that serious questions should have been asked about the ignition switch defect. however, two newspapers, including "the new york times,"

addressed the ignition switch defect in 2005. now, if i were a senior level executive that read about those problems in the newspaper, i would want answers and action. it seems gm executives demanded neither. the valukas report does make several suggestions on changing the corporate climate of gm. to respond faster and better to safety issues. and that includes improving communications with the national highway traffic safety administration, nhtsa. and i look forward to hearing from ms. barra about the changes the company has already made and its plans for future improvements in the future. gm paid the maximum penalty for failing to inform nhtsa about the ignition switch defect. that was $35 million. to me, it sounds like a lot of money, but that's not enough of a deterrent for a company with over $150 billion in revenue. sounds to me more like a slap on the wrist. i'm an original co-sponsor of ranking member henry waxman's motor vehicle safety act,

hr-4364, which would increase the maximum penalties for failing to inform nhtsa and the public of potentially deadly auto defects. as the nk raing member of the commerce manufacturing and trade subcommittee, i'm working on legislation that would do the same while also addressing several other issues raised by the gm ignition switch defect, including requiring the public disclosure of technical service bulletins. those are the bulletins which provide information to dealerships about how to repair vehicles that are experiencing a widespread problem kept from the public. in gm's case, tcbs were issued for the faulty ignition switch. in 2005, almost ten years before a recall was issued, those tsbs instructed dealerships to replace the defective part. i hope today's hearing will allow us to consider additional actions that might be needed in improving auto recalls, and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses. i yield back.

>> thank you. i would now like to introduce the witnesses on the panel for today's hearing. mary barra is chief executive officer for general motors company and has been in this role since january 15th, 2014. when she also became member of its board of directors. she has been with the company over 30 years and has held a number of positions in the company including vice president of global manufacturing engineering from 2008 to 2009. and executive director of vehicle manufacturing engineering from 2005 to 2008. mr. anton valukas is a litigator. he is a former u.s. attorney and fellow of the american college of trial lawyers. he was hired by the general motors corporation to conduct the internal investigation into the faulty ignition switch, and he is author of the report on the findings that was released

two weeks ago. i'll now swear in the witnesses. you're both aware that the committee is holding an investigative hearing and when doing so has the practice of taking testimoe ining testimony. do you have objections to testifying under oath? both witnesses say they do not. the chair add vids you under the rules of the house and rules of the committee you are entitled to be advised by counsel. do either of you desire to be advised by counsel? both decline. raise your right hand. i'll swear you in. do you swear the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? thank you. both witnesses answer in the affirmative. you are now under oath and subject to the penalties set forth in title 18, section 1001 of the united states code. you may now each give a five-minute summary of your written statement. ms. barra, would you like to open? thank you. please pull the microphone close to you. thank you.

you have to turn it on as well. i think there's -- thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the chance to appear before you again today on the ignition switch issue. before i proceed with my brief remarks, i want to again express my sympathies to the families that lost loved ones and those who suffered physical injury. i'm ever mindful that we have a special responsibility to them and to those families. and the best way to fulfill that responsibility is to fix the problem by putting in place the needed changes to prevent this from ever happening again. when i was here 11 weeks ago, i told you how we intended to proceed with this matter. i promised we would conduct a comprehensive and transparent investigation into the causes of the ignition switch problem. i promised we would share the findings of mr. valukas's report with congress, our regulators,

nhtsa and the courts. i promised we would hold people accountable and make substantial and rapid changes in our approach to recalls. finally, i promised we would engage ken feinberg to develop a just and timely program for compensating families who lost loved ones and those who suffered serious physical injury. we have done all of these things and more. and i welcome the opportunity to discuss them with you further. the valukas report, as you know, is extremely thorough, brutally tough, and deeply troubling. it paints a picture of an organization that failed to handle a complex safety issue in a responsible way. i was deeply saddened and disturbed as i read the report. for those of us who have dedicated our lives to this company, it is enormously painful to have our shortcomings laid out so vividly. there's no way to minimize the seriousness of what mr. valukas apd his investigators uncovered. on june 2nd mr. valukas

presented the findings of his investigation to the board of directors of general motors. i will leave it to mr. valukas to comment on his report, but for my part, i want you to know my reaction to the report and some of the actions i have taken since reviewing it. first, we have made a number of personnel decisions. 15 individuals identified in the report are no longer with the company. we have restructured our safety decision making process to raise it to the highest levels of the company, addressing a key point in the valukas report that critical information was kept from senior management. under the new system, this should never happen again. we are currently conducting what i believe is the most exhaustive, comprehensive safety review in the history of our company. we are leaving no stone unturned and devoting whatever resources it takes to identify potential safety issues in all of our current vehicles and on vehicles no longer in production. our responsibility is to set a new norm and a new industry

standard on safety and quality. i have told our employees, it's not enough to simply fix this problem. we need to create a new standard, and we will create a new norm. i've announced the creation of and have implemented a new global product integrity organization that is already enhancing the overall safety and quality of our products. and we are taking a very aggressive approach on recalls, and we are bringing greater rigor and discipline to our analysis and decision making process regarding these recalls and other potential safety-related matters. it's difficult to announce so many recalls, but it's absolutely the right thing to do. as we discussed last time, we've engaged kenneth feinberg to review options for establishing a compensation program, and the process is moving rapidly. mr. feinberg has the full authority to establish eligibility criteria for victims and to determine the compensation levels. he has indicated he will share his final criteria with us by the end of this month, and we

expect to begin processing claims by august 1st. we've created a new position of vice president of global vehicle safety and appointed jeff boyer, who's a highly respected expert in the field, to this position. i have personally told jeff that he will have whatever resources he needs to do the job, and he has many already. in fact, we've also named a senior attorney to support him and to facilitate rapid information sharing across the organization. in addition, we've added 35 safety investigators that are already allowing us to identify and address safety issues much more quickly. and, finally, we've instituted a speak up for safety program, encouraging employees to report potential safety issues quickly, and we are recognizing them when they do so. this is more than a campaign or a program. it's the start of changing the way we think and act at general motors. two weeks ago, i addressed the entire global workforce about the report. i told our team as bluntly as i knew how that the series of

questionable actions and inactions uncovered in the investigation were inexcusable. i also told them that while i want to solve the problems as quickly as possible, i never want anyone associated with gm to forget what happened. i want this terrible experience permanently etched in our collective memories. this is not another business challenge. this is a tragic problem that should never have happened and must never happen again. the report makes a series of recommendations in eight major areas. i have committed the company to act on all of the recommendations, and many of which we had started before and are already implemented. finally, mr. chairman and members of the committee, i know some of you are wondering about my commitment to solve deep, underlying cultural problems that were uncovered in the report. the answer is simple. i will not rest until these problems are resolved. as i told our employees, i'm not afraid of the truth. and i'm not going to accept

business as usual at gm. it's time, in fact, it's past time, to insist on total accountability and to make sure vital information is shared across all functions of the company. so we can unleash the full power of our 200,000 employees, our 21,000 dealers, and our 23,000 suppliers. we are a good company, but we can and must be much, much better. this is my focus, and this is my promise to you, our employees, our customers, our shareholders, and the american people. thank you again for having me here today. i'm pleased to take your questions. >> thank you, ms. barra. mr. valukas, you're recognized for five minutes. you have to bring that very close to your mouth and lift it up. >> all right. thank you, mr. chairman. >> even closer, if you would, sir. >> even closer? >> yes. >> okay. thank you. now i got it.

okay. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. in march of this year, general motors asked me to determine why it took so long to recall the cobalt and other vehicles that contain this faulty and defective switch which has resulted in such disaster for general motors and for the families who were involved in this matter. my explicit mandate from the general motors board of directors was to promote and provide an unvarnished report as to how and why this occurred. to pursue the facts wherever they took us, and to report those facts in a report. general motors board also directed me to make recommendations based on those factual findings to help them ensure that this did not happen again. jenner and block, my firm, was given unfettered access to general motors' witnesses and documents. in point of fact, we interviewed in the 70 days or so, 230 witnesses, some of them multiple

times, so we had about approximately 350 interviews. some of them lasting six to eight hours. we reviewed over 41 million documents coming from the files of everybody from the top executives down to the individuals who were involved at the most technical level. that number of documents involved tens of millions of materials that were personally reviewed by individual reviewers. and all of this was in an effort to find out the facts as to why this cobalt recall took over a decade and why that defective switch remained unaccounted for during that period of time. i provided a copy of the report -- sorry. a copy of that report was provided to the committee. i'm not going to go through the details. but the story of the cobalt is a story of individual and organizational failures that have led to devastating consequences. throughout the decade it took general motors to recall the cobalt, there was, as has already been described here this morning by one of the members,

lack of accountability, a lack of urgency, and extraordinarily a failure of the company personnel charged with safetyish sh issues to understand how the car was manufactured and the interplay between the switch and other aspects of the automobile. in our report we review ethese failures and identify cultural issues that may have contributed to this problem. as general motors' board requested, we have provided recommendations to help ensure that this problem does not take place in the future. but as we note in my written statement to you, that is an issue which gm must deal. the report does not give all of the answers. thank you. >> thank you very much. now, i recognize myself for five minutes of questions. mr. valukas, your report references such terms as the gm nod and the gm salute where people nod in agreement and do nothing or look to others to do

something, but no one accepts responsibility. ms. barra, do you agree with mr. valukas when he states that the culture is the problem at gm, that a culture at gm failed to recognize certain -- >> i agree that there are specific people involved that did not act appropriately. >> you've been with the company for 30 years, right? >> yes, i have. >> how does someone who has spent an entire within the career within gm change the culture of gm? i believe there's 200,000 employees or so at gm. you mentioned 15 were fired. that's 99.999%, if my math is right, of the people are the same. if you haven't changed the people, how do you change the culture? >> again, the people -- the 15 people that are no longer with the company are the people that either didn't take action they should or didn't work urgently enough to rectify this matter. and they are no longer part of this company. that was a strong signal to send within the company. but, again, what's much more important is that we create the

right environment where every engineer is able -- everyone in the company is able to come to work every day and do their best work, be supported. and that is the culture that we're working to create. that's the programs we've put in place like speak up for safety. and the structural changes we've made. >> the previously referenced article by bloomberg notes that cortland kelly, who worked on the cavalier, predecessor to the cobalt, raised questions about a defective fuel line. he had to continue to do that, even threatening in moving forward whistle blower actions. this was referenced on page 93, mr. valukas, of your report where it says, oakling also noted, however, he was reluctant to push hard on safetyish shoo us because of his perception that his predecessor had been pushed out of the job for doing just that. i guess this speaks to the question of what is a coverup. mr. valukas, you concluded there was no conspiracy and no coverup. does an employee acting alone who hides or doesn't share information a coverup?

>> i'm sorry. in the latter part? >> does an employee who acts alone or who hides or doesn't share information a coverup? >> if the individual knows that the information is, for instance, safety information and understands that and deliberately decides to conceal that, that's a coverup, yes, it is. >> and on a corporate culture of carelessness where life saving information sits in file boxes collecting dust as you referred to, is that a coverup? >> what we found in connection with this, mr. chairman, was the following. we found that a large number of individuals had information that -- in the first instance they didn't believe was safety-related information. clearly up to about 2009 they looked at this as a convenience matter. and they dealt with it that way. we did not find evidence that any individual had a piece of evidence in connection with this cobalt recall which they considered to be safety information, which they deliberately withheld from somebody else. >> you put in your report,

though, that mr. oakley specifically says he's reluctant to push hard on safety issues. >> i'm sorry? >> you put in your report where mr. oakley specifically says on page 93, he was reluctant to push hard on safety issues because of his perception that his predecessor had been pushed out of a job. that implies he withheld safety information. first of all, ms. barra, is he still working for you? >> yes, he is. and, actually, he's raised issues and we are actively investigating. it's part of our speak up for safety program. >> it sounds like he decided not to speak up. >> well, he is now. and we're taking it very seriously. >> i just find it hard to believe that of 210,000 employees, not a single one in that company had the integrity to say, i think we're making a mistake here. not a single one. that's puzzling to me. i mean, even out of the v.a. hospital we have lots of whistle blowers. i don't see here in gm that there's whistle blowers. not a single person you

interviewed in this? let me jump to another question. i want to get back to this. because there was also a lot of issues about lawsuits. you referenced some of those. what i don't see here is questions of if you examined if gm responded appropriately to victims' discovery requests in the lawsuits, including what gm understood about the airbag deployment. did you find that -- i don't know if you spoke with plaintiffs' attorneys in this case. but did you find that in every case, that information requested of gm was responded to in a timely manner of the plaintiffs' attorneys question and that the information they presented to gm was responded to? >> mr. chairman, what we did was, at the very beginning of this investigation, i sent letters and e-mails to the key plaintiffs' lawyers who were involved and where there would be in the most sensitive of these cases. i don't want to mention family names. but including the case that resulted in the disclosure of the two switches. inviting them to contact me so that we could talk in the

investigation, determine -- deal with that issue. not one of those attorneys responded to me. i also interviewed the attorneys who were outside counsel in connection with the gm matters. the particular piece of litigation to determine whether i had any evidence there of something which would indicate that gm had particular facts which they were withholding in order to accomplish something. and i did not find evidence of that in my discussions with outside counsel. i reviewed all of the e-mails relating to the legal department in connection with all of these cases. i say "i." jenner and block did. i didn't review them personally. to determine whether there was any evidence that there was information that they had that they were now making a decision, for instance, to settle a case because they wanted to conceal the safety defect and prevent a recall, and i did not find information such as that. >> i appreciate it. i'm out of time. i want to say there's a difference between not getting a response and not having the facts. my asumption is when you tasked mr. valukas with getting this

information, if you don't have all this information do you still want it? the information with regard to if information was not passed on. do plaintiffs attorneys who made requests, do you still want that information? i'm out of time. i'll go to ms. degette. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. valukas, the chairman just asked ms. barra about this gm nod and gm salute that you talked about in your report on page 255 and 256, where you said one witness described the gm phenomenon of avoiding responsibility as the gm salute, a crossing of the arms and pointing outwards toward the other indicating the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me. and then you said, similarly, mary barra described a phenomenon known as the gm nod. the gm nod barra described is when everyone nods in agreement a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room with no intention to follow through and the nod is an empty gesture.

when the chairman just asked ms. barra about this, she said, quote, specific -- there were specific people involved that did not act appropriately. do you think this company culture, the gm nod and the gm salute, was just limited to those 15 people who have been terminated from gm? yes or no? >> i can't tell you -- i can't answer that question. >> do you think it was only 15 people who did this gm nod and salute? >> no. i think there were a number of people who were on the committees -- >> thank you. and you learned that although the problems with the ignition switch's safety issues were known by many in the company, gm's senior leadership, including ms. barra, was unaware of these issues for years. is that correct? >> that is factually correct. >> thank you. these leaders included gmceos including rick wagner, mike milliken, then gm's general counsel, and ms. barra. correct? >> that is correct. >> and, ms. barra, you

previously testified that you didn't know about the problems with the ignition switch until december 2013. is that correct? >> i testified i knew there was an issue with the cobalt in december. that they were studying. i knew there was an ignition switch issue on january 31st. that's what i testified to. >> in december 2013. right? >> january 31st, 2014, was when i knew the ignition switch was an issue. >> thanks. gay kent, director of vehicle safety in your department, she made decisions in 2004 about the stalling being a safety risk. did she ever share those findings with you? yes or no? >> no. >> and jim fred rhee coe, a senior gm executive brought in to find solutions to the airbag situation in 2012, he knew about the problems, and he reported directly to you. did he ever share his knowledge with you? >> he -- >> yes or no? >> well, he reported directly to me at a portion of this time. then he no longer reported -- >> but did he ever tell you about these problems? >> no. >> no, he didn't. now, you've made a number of structural changes at gm, and i

appreciate this, and i know you're committed to doing it. but the company culture is what concerns me as well as the chairman. and the problems that i've identified today are not problems about who reports to whom, but rather a culture that encourages people not to stick their necks out and report things. in fact, just yesterday i learned from a source very close to gm who has intimate knowledge of the culture there that the results of mr. valukas's investigation and the terminations of these 15 employees have only created more paranoia within the company that people are going to lose their jobs. and so i want to ask you, ms. barra, what are you doing not just to change the structure and put these safety programs together and so on, but to change the culture of the company so that the company rewards people reporting problems, not -- not sweeping it under the rug. >> we are doing a lot. and it's -- to your point, it's not done by words. it's not done by slogans.

it's done by actions. >> so what is it that you're doing? >> so we have put the speak up for safety program. and we are getting -- i'm getting personally information from employees. i'm acting on it. we have a regular program, we're going to be recognizing those individuals. i have spoken to all of our employees globally, encouraging them. i think most important the work that we're doing and the actions we're taking with the additional recalls demonstrate how sincere we are to put the customer in the center of everything we do. and we want to make sure we are doing the right thing as it relates to safety, as it relates for quality, and our employees are seeing that. >> okay. i would like to see, if you may supplement your answer, what the specifics of how you're rewarding this. >> happy to do that. >> i want to talk to you briefly about this compensation fund. i'm pleased now that you're telling us that mr. feinberg is setting up a compensation fund, but we still don't have very many details of it. has the company or mr. feinberg determined the criteria about who will be eligible for payment? yes or no?

>> he is developing that. but i think the important -- >> so we don't have that criteria yet, correct? >> he's got a draft protocol that he's getting input. he is an independent -- >> would you please provide that to this committee. the draft protocol? >> yes, we can. >> thank you very much. >> can i make a point? >> no. let me ask you this. will mr. feinberg have discretion to make eligible for payment victims beyond those identified by gm today? because we're hearing there may be up to 100 deaths from this. >> we want to capture every single person who suffered serious physical injury or lost a loved one. every single person as a result of the -- >> so your answer is yes? >> yes. >> okay. and will those people who received payment through this program be required to release their legal claims? >> i'm sorry. the voluntary program? >> no. if they get compensated from mr. feinberg's program, will they have to release their legal claims to go to court? do you know?

>> this program is in lieu of taking this to court. >> so your answer is yes? >> i can't say exhaustively, but as it relates to -- >> will you submit your answer, please, and let me know that? thank you very much. >> gentle lady's time has expired. recognize mr. upton for five minutes. >> thank you, again. you know, i'm a firm bebeliever that you cannot solve a problem that you don't acknowledge or fully understand. so while i'm going to try to be very interested in forward looking solutions, i want to begin by walking through and defining some key problems that we identified from this report. first, a simple yes or no. is it true that gm engineers did not believe the ignition switch moving from run to accessory and causing a stall constituted a safety problem? first, ms. barra? >> yes. >> mr. valukas? >> yes. >> can you confirm that a gm engineer test driving the cobalt in '05 experienced a shutoff after hitting the key with his knee and that his report on the incident was categorized as an

annoyance rather than a safety issue? >> yes. >> let's continue talking about how gm employee warnings and experiences were handled. i read with a lot of concern this morning's news coverage alleging that employee safety concerns went unheeded. i won't ask you to respond to a particular newspaper article, but i do want to get your reaction to a case uncovered in our investigation about a specific employee concern. i want to know how it was handled at the time and how it would be handled if it was raised today. you've got a tab on page 83 in your binder. but in '05, a gm employee drove an '06 chevy impala home from work. when she hit a bump in the road, the ignition switch fell out of the run position and stalled the car. let me read you from her e-mail, which is up on the screen, sent in october of '05 after she took the vehicle for repair.

quote, i think this is a serious safety problem, especially if the switch is on multiple programs. i'm thinking big recall. i was driving 45 miles per hour when i hit the pothole and the car shut off. and i had a car driving behind me, swerving around me. i don't like to imagine a customer driving with their kids in the backseat on backseat on hitting a pothole in rush hour traffic. i think you should seriously consider changes this part to a switch with a stronger detent. end quote. so to reiterate, nearly nine years ago, a gm employee suggested the stalling of the '06 impala was a serious safety problem. and speculated that a big recall was coming. so when was the recall for the '06 impala announced? do you know? >> i believe that was part of -- >> two days ago.

monday. nine years ago. so, looking at that case, and looking as if it happened today, can you tell us specifically how a concern like this would be handled if it was raised today? >> yes. we -- as i testified when i was here the last time, we consider a stall to be a safety issue. and so when a stall is brought forward, if we then learn and understand it's because of a defect in the way the vehicle, some part or a system in the vehicle is working, we are going to address it. we do have to understand stalls also happen when you run out of gas or pop the clutch. but if we are aware of the stall, and we then learn that it's because some part of the vehicle or our system is not operately properly, we'll immediately take action and that is what was represented on what we did monday. >> mr. valukas, in going through the report, there was some comments made as to the consumer

friendliness of the tread act requirements, in terms of complaints that were received. what suggestions might you have relating to that? in terms of how we proceed in the future. >> i don't have a specific legislative suggestion for you. i did include in the recommendations, something which i think is very important for general motors which is they need to look at nhtsa as a partner in this issue and not somebody they held at bay. so the transmission of the information is a free-flow of information and problems are elevated at the earliest possible point. it is clear to me from the earlier parts of this investigation there were times it was almost an adversarial situation than a passing of legislation. but i don't have a suggestion for. you. >> miss barra, do you have a comment as it relates to the compiles for the tread act for the complaints? >> i think it's very important that we have a productive

relationship with the agency with nhtsa. and i do think there's things that can be done to the national vindicate da base and also improving the valuable information that's in the tread database. >> i yield back. >> i have a clarifying question based on something miss degette and mr. upton said. given that gm has now recalled i think it's 40 million cars. do you have a revised number of deaths from crashes that may have been associated with the faulty ignition switch? do you have a number yet? >> the recall we did on monday, there's no known. >> overall. >> the information that we have as it relates to the cobalt and the population of those vehicles the known number that we have is still 13. >> thank you. recognize mr. dingle now for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, miss barra and mr. valukas. we appreciate you being here today.