we will begin with miss christie romero for five minutes. >> chairman mchenry, ranking member quigley and members of the committee, i'm very honored to appear before you today and very much want to thank you for holding this hearing. sig-t.a.r.p. was created to protect the interests of those who funded t.a.r.p. and that's the american taxpayers, and an important part of sig-t.a.r.p.'s mission is to bring transparency to the decisions that were made by the government in the wake of the financial crisis. by examining the past, we can take advantage of lessons learned so that we can better protect taxpayers in the future. in addition, taxpayers have an absolute right to know the decisions that went into how t.a.r.p. dollars were spent. the government provided approximately $80 billion in t.a.r.p. funds in the auto bailout, and sig-t.a.r.p. has brought transparency to decisions made by treasury and the auto task force in the auto bailout. we seek to bring greater transparency to gm's decisions to provide funds to top up the pensions of certain hourly workers who are at delphi corporation

christie romero for insisting on answers to these questions. all together, the government pumped $80 billion into -- of t.a.r.p. funds into the bailouts of general motors and chrysler and related entities, with as chairman mchenry suggested, not a shred -- [ no audio ] [ no audio ] -- to the unjustified preferential treatment of the uaw in bankruptcy. to the tune of $26.5 billion. to give you a sense of the size of those losses, that is larger than nasa's annual budget, that is larger than the entire foreign aid budget and that is larger than the annual budget of the state of missouri. it would be much more accurate to refer to this as a uaw bailout rather than an automotive bailout. we have heard a lot of talk about shared sacrifice today, but i think steven ratner, the obama administration's former car czar, said it best when he said we should have asked the uaw to do more. we did not ask any uaw member to take a cut in their pay. james shirk and i document three different ways in which the uaw was given preferential treatment here that resul

the honorable christie's romero is the inspector general for the troubled assets relief program, the united states department of treasury. mr. ron bloom, mr. matthew feldman, and mr. harry wilson are all former members of the automotive task force at the united states department of treasury. yet the government accountability office, thank you for door service. mr. todd zywicki is a professor of law at george mason university school foley and seniors -- scholar. as you all know, this committee swears in witnesses for their testimony, so if you'd please rise and raise your right hand he will be sworn in before your testimony. raise your right hand. if you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but trees? >> thank you. let the record reflect that the witness's answer in the affirmative. you all are well practiced and testified before congress as you well know we have the light system here. green means as we know from traffic traffic schools if you have tickets or repeated traffic schools agreement means go coming yellow