Obama somber on auto industry

Responding to a question about his plans for the auto industry, Obama says he’ll roll out a plan in the next few days, “I don’t want to make all the news here today,” he says.

His “general philosophical approach,” he says, is that “we need to preserve a U.S. auto industry.”

But he adds that the auto industry is going to have to make severe changes to their economic model. “The price [for government assistance] is, you’ve got to finally restructure to deal with these longstanding problems.”

“Just trying to build more and more SUVs and counting on gas prices being low…that’s just not going to work.” Obama added. “I’m not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money.”