Voluntary program. Otherwise people have the same rights they have today. They have the same rights, but youre trying to block those rights in the Bankruptcy Court yes or no . Our intent is to do a Compensation Program and the right thing for these individuals. But yourestructing your lawyers to back off the bankruptcy case. So if mr. Feinbergs parameters dont mitt but a Competent Court finds they might, not going to matter to you. Ill move on to another question. Im concerned a little bit about the fact that your Legal Department didnt pick this up. Were any of the lawyers fired for not being dill gept . There were four different functions in which individuals were fired. Legal being one of them, engineering, quality and public policy. Because it did concern me that the trooper youngs report was sitting in the gm files in the Legal Department for a period of about six years and only one person opened the fire during that time period and that was the legal assistant. Let me ask you this. Can the lawyers i think they ought to be, but can the lawyers start a Safety Investigation . Anyone in the company can raise a safety issue. We want them to. And theyre more than able to do that. And in this case the lawyers didnt do that and is that why one of them may have been fired . Clearly there were people that didnt share information to put all all the pieces together. And those individuals are no longer with the company. And were strongly encouraging everybody in the company to raise issues. I will tell you im about to run out of time, so i appreciate that. In closing, if gm truly wants to compensate everybody who has been harmed fully and fairly, they ought to ask their lawyers to stop asking the Bankruptcy Court for Bankruptcy Court protection and let these matters work their way out. Thank you. Yield back. The lucas report identifies mr. Ray de sgchlt orgio who he say has no credibility to approve the deadly ignition switch this 2002 and to modify it in 2006. Your report states that one of the key failures was, quote, the decision by a single engineer who did not advisories of his decision to accept an ignition switch with full knowledge that it fell well below gms own specifications. Is that correct . Right. The implication here is that mr. Degorgio acted alone, but the report describes problems soer associated with the ignition switch many of which were known as early as 2001 according to the report, the, quote, entire electrical concept needed to be redesigned end quote. The switch had significant problems that were known to gm. And i want to congratulate of staff of our committee for the amazing work that they did independently to investigate all these issues. In his interview with the committee, mr. Degorgio told Committee Staff that he met with his superiors around february 2002 to inform them that the ignition switch would be delayed. Attendees at the meeting included the vehicles chief engineer, the Program Engineering manager, and electrical directors. It was clear the switch was getting a lot of attention. So ms. Barra, is it your belief that one engineer, mr. Degorgio, unilaterally approved a part plagued by problems from the start . The basic issue is that the switch that he approved to go into production did not meet the performance requirements. That was the first mistake. And it was his alone is this. He was the one responsible for it. Knowledge of the problem is important. T report notes there is no evidence that degeorge i dont told others at gm including engineers on the Caldwell Program about the spring change to the ignition switch. It notes other employees had received documents describing the ignition switch change as early as june 2006 and that these documents clearly indicated that the switches used in pre2007 models were not within specifications. Is that correct . The answer to that question is there were emails which were forwarded to other individuals which contained within those emails after the change was made information about the fact that the torque had changed. We interviewed those individuals. Those individuals were by and large in the warranty area. They had no they were looking at something that it meant nothing to them as the two we were able to locate and find. It was not they were totally unaware of the issues concerning the switch not deploying any aspect. So the one individual who did know all of the facts and had that information was mr. Degorgio. The other engineers, it meant nothing to them. But there is an email im holding here that discusses implementation of the new page 102 . I believe thats right. The quote is increased torque forces to be within specifications. And it was sent to five gm employees on june 2, 2006. But we have also obtained another document that was not included in your report, and this document indicates that another sgchlt m contract engineer may have approved the 2006 change. Its a production part approval process report obtained by delphi through gms global quality tracking system. It is dated june 1, 2006 and it lists gm supplier quality engineer a sgchltgm supplier quality engineer. And the notes read, new pcb and sprung plunger implementation for performance improvement. Part approved per supplier submitted warrant and gm. So have you seen that report, the global quality tracking system. Yes. So did you interview the listed supply quality engineer or look into what role he might have played in approving the switch change in 2006 . We did the following. We looked at that change and what happened was the following. Supply quality engineers function is to determine whether the boxes are filled out and materials are properly identified here. And then he submits that and puts that into the system. He does not have as we understand it anything to do with making decisions on the change. Hes actually functioning as somebody putting something into the system. I dont think we interviewed that particular individual. We know what his function and role was. I dont want to minimize mr. Degorgios roam degorgios role, but i do think the documents problem the problem is deeper than one rogue engineer. And i yield back. Now recognize mr. Johnson from ohio for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. M your report ask yous an early may 2005 email about a concern concern about the ignition switch. Thats at tab 12. Your report focused on mr. Degorgios awareness of this exchange. There were others on this change including doug parks. What was doug parks position at the time . I honestly dont recall his title. Wasnt he the vehicle chief engineer . He may well have been. I dont recall. Lets assume that he was because thats what we think he was. Why was it more significant that mr. Degorgio was aware of this exchange rather than the vehicle chief engineer . I dont know that it was more significant. It was significant because mr. Degorgio ultimately made the decision to change the part. And in our interviews with him, he said he was not aware of the fact that this was an issue, that he was not a wafware of th publicity and evemail traffic while we had information that that was not the case. What is the chief engineers responsibility . Within the company . I do not have an answer for that. Ill find out and be happy to smi submit that. The chief engineer is responsible for the overall integration of the vehicle and making the wall and tradeoff decisions for that vehicle. And if issues are raised to him, then he or she will deal with that. What knowledge should someone in the chief engineer position have about the vehicle compared to someone such as mr. Degorgio . Would it be reasonable that the vehicle chief engineer would have known about this situation . Again, there are 30,000 parts on a car. The chief engineer has to count on the people doing their job. In the mid 2000s, there was validation engineers that were added to make sure the process was done well. And now with the product integrity organization, well be validating the sub systems. But the chief engineer takes information from those that right. The system works i got to move on. In a may 4th response, mr. Parks requests a plug to insert in the key head since it appears to be the only in his quote only real quick solution. But this solution was not implemented for months. Do you know why . Part of the defunct of what was happening in the organization. They were treating this as a customer convenience issue rather than a safety issue. So they look at issues in terms of price, expense, cost. Rather than safety. Okay. A few weeks later on may 17, a new prts was initiated and the program team decided to pursue Additional Solutions beyond the service fix for the key insert. A short term production fix for a new key that changed the slot to a hole and a long Term Solution to introduce a more robust ignition switch. Who was responsible for initiate and implementing these changes . These would have been the committees involved and i dont have the name in front of me. But the committees that were involved in the review and ultimately they didnt make they didnt do what they said they were going to do. Were they reviewed by the vehicle chief engineer . I dont know that. Do you know as i read the report, i think what youre referring to was Continuous Improvement team and i believe that the chief was not there, it was the Program Engineering manager. Why does it take until 2009 to implement the new key head and who was responsible for ensuring that this change was implemented . Do either of you know . I can tell you the reason it was delayed was because it was treated again as a customer convenience issue. They had an issue with regard to their supplier and a dispute with regard to his ability to deliver. And it wasnt until 2009 that the dispute was resolved and they ultimately made that change with regard to the key. Ms. Barra, in my previous life, i worked in a publicly traded company as a part of the executive team. We have a risk and compliance department, we have a risk in compliance director. My understanding, part of the concern that youre continuing to address is that this information never bubbled up to some of the key decision makers. The s. E. C. Requires there are laws that require reports of risk and compliance related issues. Were any of the s. E. C. Reports or risks were the risks in compliance folks notified that millions were being paid out for claims as a result of some of these problems . How does it break down that bad in a company that is, you know, publicly traded . I cant speak to specifically what was in an s. E. C. Report, but what i can tell you, its unacceptable the way things broke down and thats why weve made dramatic process changes. But as congresswoman degette indicated we want to make sure we have the safest and highest Quality Vehicles on the road. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Welcome to our panel. As we examine what went wrong in this terrible tragedy, the most important job i believe for congress is to strengthen and improve auto safety laws to ensure that Something Like this never happens again. We owe that certainly owe to the families of the victims of this tragedy, many of whom are in our audience today for the hearing. That being said, one area that i believe we need to address is to improve Early Warning report data. Can you describe briefly Early Warning report data . What is the data itself is this. Yes. Information that comes to the attention of the company which indicates that there are potential safety problems of which they are required to make alerts. And i believe the 2000 tread act requires the information being reported to nhtsa . Thats correct. So you describe a number of cases where gm investigators analyze this tread data to attempt to identify are or explain air bag nondeployment in cobalts and ions. Is that not correct . I ccannot give you a number f where that was done. And federal governmefederal able to identify the defect . The issue of the nondeploy the of the air bag was a matter of discussion in 2007 about between nhtsa and General Motors. Nhtsa noted there were nondeployments. Gms response was to begin an investigation to see to keep a chart of what was taking place. There were no major further discussions about that issue until 2013. It seems that part of the problem here is that Early Warning report data provided to nhtsa are reported in 23 broad categories. In the case of this defect, Early Warning data provided to nhtsa spanned several categories including engine, air bags and category of other. Nhtsa says request more detailed information from manufacturer but it is difficult to know what to request given the minimum level of detail provided in the first place. Nhtsa needs more detailed Early Warning day take so that they can spot trends and request the most useful followup information from the auto manufacturers. And more Early Warning data should be available to the public. We can all appreciate the value of outside experts in spotting issues that otherwise go undetected. Finally, nhtsa needs appropriate Enforcement Mechanisms to ensure auto manufacturers comply with the laws. Especially when safety is at stake. On may 16, gm agreed to pay the maximum fine for failure to report a safety related defect to nhtsa and that i believe is 35 million. Ms. Barra, what was gms net income in 2013 . Just under 4 billion. Just under 4 billion. So the penalty for failing to report the ignition switch defect is less than 1 of gms earnings for last year. That is a correct math, but i think our intent is that we deal with safety issues by the time you get to talking about a fine, the customers already been impacted in an incredibly negative way. We want to make sure were putting high quality safe vehicles on the road and we want to work in cooperation with nhtsa to do that. None the less, it is not much of a determent, mr. Chair. We need to increase this maximum penalty. 35 million is not an adequate deterrent to a large Profitable Company like g permit. If the penalty had been higher, gm might not have waited over a decade to report this safety defect to nhtsa. And its clear to me nhtsa needs higher penalty authorities. We need to make certain the penalty for not reporting a safety defect is a sufficient threat to deter Auto Companies from needlessly delaying safety decisions. Fixes in these areas like the tsbs public improving Early Warning report data and increasing penalties should be easy for us to agree upon. And with the seconds i have remar remaining, the gm website indicates customers should only utilize the key, key ring and key fob if equipped that came with the vehicle. Ms. Barra, many consumers have key chains with multiple keys. Why if the new replacement switch is adequate does gm still recommend that consumers not use their full key rings the way they would normally use them . Again, the system meets and has been validated and also by nhtsa. But as i have gone through this process over the last three months, i have seen incredible things on key chains that across the industry, i think this is actually an industry issue that we have to look at. I notice key chains everywhere i go now and i just think its something that needs to be addressed more broadly across the industry. I yield back. Now recognize will lomr. Lon five minutes. Thank you all for be here. Do you feel like that you conducted a thorough investigation . Yes. According to what you testified to today, if my math is right, how many people are on that team, how many people investigated along with you . The number of individuals who were employed at one point or another in reviewing documents, doing interviews, several hundred. According to my math, you all looked at 1220 documents a minute. Sorry, say that again. I said according to my math, you looked at 1220 documents a minute. If you said you had access to 41 million documents. I dont know how in the world you you could do a thorough investigation in that time frame. We used computers and programs to analyze the documents for purposes of kicking out those documents which are reflective of the issues that are here. We used as part of that database requests being made by congress, requests being made by us for the United States attorneys office, by nhtsa, and we isolated those documents and then gave them through three levels of review for purposes of determining whether they were relevant to any aspect here, i feel very comfortable back to my first question. You think it was a thorough investigation. Im not in your business, you are. So im just trying to learn here. Im sorry. So the report that you released, were you sxwichbyou g deadline . The woboard of directors whe they employed me to do this investigation asked me whether i could get it done within a certain time frame and i told them we could. That was the deadline. It was my commitment that we could do it in that time period. Part of that was associated with the fact that they wanted to now because there were deaths involved here what were the problems. Part of it was because of the that we wanted to get the report out or being able to respond to congress. So we had that deadline. And once you got your report completed, or once you completed the report, to whom at General Motors did you present the results . Board of directors. And what was their reaction . I cant tell you what their reaction was. I know the reaction was what youve seen with ms. Barra, which is to follow up on it. So you didnt receive any resistance to your findings or recommendations . None. None. Were you asked fto make any changes to your report . No, i was not. And what i did tell them and what i mentioned here, if we found Something Different as we continue to gather documents because there are requests here and elsewhere, we would review the report and if there was anything in the report that we found to be in error or needed to be corrected or changed, we would report that back to the board and i presume they would report it back to you. So other than that, does that end your and i apologize. Ive been here about 90 of the hearing, but i did hav