The Bush administration should stop dragging its feet on financial assistance for the domestic automobile industry. The Big Three automakers stand on the edge of disaster. The government has a compelling interest as well as an obligation to keep them from toppling.

The auto industry accounts for between one in seven and one in 10 jobs in America. It also represents a major piece of its industrial capacity, no small consideration if the nation suddenly has to shift to turning out the machines of war, as it did in World War II.

If a significant portion of the industry disappears, the budding recession will certainly deepen and a recovery will be made much harder.

Automakers are pleading with the government to deliver on its promise of $25 billion in federal loans to retool their operations for building fuel-efficient vehicles and to keep them afloat until the anticipated recovery in 2010.

Both presidential candidates have expressed support for the loans, which were committed by Congress a year ago when automakers agreed to spend $85 billion to transform to a more fuel-efficient fleet. There is no justification for continuing to delay the promised money.

General Motors Corp. wants $5 billion to $10 billion in loans to help pay for its absorption of Chrysler. Cash-starved GM sees the move as a way to trim its operating costs and take capacity out of the bloated auto industry. Cerberus, the private equity fund that owns Chrysler, sees the sale to GM as a way out of operating a troubled car company.

We can't say if this is the best deal for the industry. But we do ask that all options for saving Chrysler be exhausted first.

Chrysler's demise would eliminate 19,000 to 35,000 jobs, a large portion of them in Michigan. The loss of these jobs, as well as the Chrysler headquarters and its dealer network, would put Michigan even deeper in an economic hole.

What hasn't been fully explained is whether there's another option that would preserve both GM and Chrysler, or at least a larger portion of the two companies.

Renault-Nissan offered to purchase a 20 percent stake in Chrysler, but Cerberus prefers a deal with GM, and talks with the French-Japanese automaker reportedly have stopped. In the end, there may be no way to save Chrysler.

But saving any automaker becomes more difficult the longer the government waits to act. Taxpayers have a compelling interest in preserving the maximum number of automotive jobs.

The key is not to attach too many strings to the aid that could hamstring the automakers from being profitable and competitive. Obama wants to double federal aid to the automakers to $50 billion, but told NBC News that it should be focused on "the high-efficiency cars of the future."

"The government's not going to help if you continue down a strategy that is entirely relying on building big gas guzzlers," he added.

The first $25 billion in federal aid is supposed to help automakers retool their factories to make more gas-stingy vehicles to meet higher fuel economy standards. And the automakers should follow through with that. But with the price of gasoline having plummeted to as low as $2.10 a gallon in Metro Detroit from $4, consumers have a much lower incentive to buy smaller, fuel-efficient cars.

If the government imposes overly strict aid rules, such as unrealistic fuel-efficient vehicle production quotas, they could deliver more business to foreign automakers, which make gas-guzzlers.

The Bush administration should move immediately to begin the flow of the promised loan money already approved by Congress and assess how much more may be needed.

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