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 subcommittees 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 doesnt appear to be a case of a coverup or a conspiracy. Instead, according to mr. Valukass report gms failure to recall faulty vehicles was a case of incompetence and neglect. Perhaps this report should have been subtitled dont 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. Thats 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 its 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. Thats 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 gms 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 gms 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. Its 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 doesnt 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 didnt anyone at gm ask, we have known for years we have an airbag system that isnt 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, were still trying to unravel the facts that led to one of the worst automotive tragedies of the last decade. Thats 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 gms 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 doesnt 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 highlevel 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 youve 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 companys 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 its not easy for you to learn about so many things that went wrong at gm. You have my word that well 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 ladys 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 didnt comprehend how their cars o p rated or how Vehicle Systems were linked together. A company believed a car that stalled while driving wasnt necessarily a safety concern. Investigators let investigations drift for years, despite having proof right before their eyes that an airbag system wasnt 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 publics 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 youve 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 were addressing gms actions in response today we will address ntsas part of the story in the near future. We dont yet have all the answers about what changes in our laws, the regulators practices or the companys culture would have prevented this safety defect from lingering so long or harming so many. But were 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. Its 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. Thats unacceptable for one of americas 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. Im 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. Its 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. Feinbergs 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 gms defective vehicles deserved better. Gm failed you. Were 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 gms 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. Theres 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 thats how gm will compensate those who were injured or who lost loved ones in crashes prior to gms 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. Its now been 79 days. So i hope well 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, its not clear to me that any seniorlevel 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 va