Columns of the Day: Big Changes for the Big 3

For your consideration: three columns about what to do with the Big Three.
Michael Barone sees problems with bailouts and bankruptcy:

And yet the implications of a bailout are frightening. The Detroit Three were unprofitable well before the current financial crisis hit, and GM is reportedly hemorrhaging $1 billion a month. The huge cost of lavish employee and retiree health care benefits, negotiated with the United Auto Workers (UAW), makes it impossible for the companies to sell for a profit anything but the big cars and SUVs that, after gas prices hit $4 a gallon last spring, almost no one wants to buy.

Robert Samuelson argues that a bailout must come with strings attached, including writing down debt, lowering labor costs, and mandated higher gas prices:

To encourage consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, Congress should mandate higher gas prices. Gasoline taxes could be raised gradually (say, a penny a month for four years, possibly offset by other tax cuts).

It's a sentiment echoed by a pair of contributors to the NY Times, who suggest:

a price floor of $3.50 per gallon on gasoline. If the price drops below that, as it recently has, the federal government would impose a variable tax to bring the price up to $3.50. If the price goes above $3.50, then the tax disappears. The money raised by the variable tax would be used, at least in the short term, to provide loan guarantees to the auto companies. (To ease the burden of higher gasoline prices on low-income taxpayers, some of the revenue would be provided to them as tax credits or vouchers.)