[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1445 Introduced in House (IH)]







110th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 1445

Commending the General Motors Corporation on the occasion of its 100th 
                              anniversary.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 16, 2008

  Mr. Kildee (for himself, Mr. Dingell, Mr. Rogers of Michigan, Mrs. 
   Miller of Michigan, Ms. Sutton, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. Knollenberg, Ms. 
Kaptur, Mr. Levin, Mr. Stupak, Mr. Camp of Michigan, Mr. Hoekstra, Mr. 
 McCotter, Mr. Walberg, Mr. Upton, Ms. Kilpatrick, Mr. Visclosky, and 
Mr. Conyers) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 
                  the Committee on Energy and Commerce

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Commending the General Motors Corporation on the occasion of its 100th 
                              anniversary.

Whereas General Motors Corporation (GM) traces its history to September 16, 
        1908, when its colorful founder William C. (Billy) Durant incorporated 
        the company with a visionary idea that several car makers combined under 
        one company umbrella would be more effective and have more growth 
        potential than one brand on its own;
Whereas by 1916, the General Motors family included the legendary Chevrolet, 
        Oakland (later Pontiac), GMC, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac brands and 
        under Durant's successor, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (often called the father 
        of modern management), GM soon adopted the equally revolutionary 
        strategy of ``a car for every purse and purpose'', dividing the vehicle 
        market into price segments ranging from low-price to luxury and 
        targeting each brand and model of General Motors to a distinct segment, 
        something no other manufacturer or marketer had ever done;
Whereas this milestone innovation, plus the equally unprecedented innovation of 
        the annual model change, enabled General Motors to become America's 
        number one seller of vehicles in 1926, a position the company still 
        holds today;
Whereas in the 1930s, with the Great Depression, tensions in the workplace 
        spread across America, setting the stage for the historic GM ``sit-
        down'' strike in Flint, Michigan, which led to General Motors becoming 
        the first company to recognize the United Automobile Workers of America 
        (UAW), soon the country's largest union, and new health care and pension 
        benefits first negotiated between the UAW and GM in 1950 became the norm 
        for all American industry in the second half of the twentieth century;
Whereas with America's entry into World War II, no company converted faster or 
        more comprehensively to wartime production than General Motors, leading 
        to it being called the greatest industrial transformation in history, 
        with more than 200 plants in North America shifting to the production of 
        airplanes, tanks, machine guns, and other military vehicles and goods in 
        a matter of months;
Whereas General Motors alone supplied the forces of the United States with more 
        than $12 billion in military goods (several hundreds of billions when 
        converted to today's dollars), more than any other company, leading the 
        late management theorist Peter Drucker to go so far as to say that 
        ``General Motors won the war for America'';
Whereas in September 2001, GM's ``Keep America Rolling'' Program is credited 
        with jump-starting the American economy in a period of great financial 
        uncertainty and anxiety following the terrorist attacks and the worse 
        loss of life and destruction on American soil since Pearl Harbor;
Whereas since its inception in 1908, GM has sold more than 308 million cars and 
        trucks in the United States and more than 445 million worldwide and 
        nearly 1 million Americans earn their living either building or selling 
        GM vehicles;
Whereas in the past seven years, GM's capital investments in the United States 
        have totaled more than $31 billion, more than double and triple those of 
        foreign automakers with U.S. operations; and
Whereas GM is committed to playing a leading role in providing meaningful 
        solutions to address America's energy needs and to remove the automobile 
        from the environmental equation with advanced technology and alternate 
        sources of propulsion that will include the first mass-produced extended 
        range electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt, in 2010: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives commends and 
congratulates the General Motors Corporation on the occasion of its 
100th anniversary.
                                 <all>