Nearly 2 million American jobs have disappeared over the past 12 months. Nearly 3 million more could be lost if the American auto industry fails. In that context, a $15 billion federal loan hardly seems unreasonable.

But congressional efforts to broker a deal were torpedoed last week when Republican senators decided unions weren't making adequate concessions. This amounts to playing a desperate game of chicken with economic catastrophe, and we're all going to wind up paying the price.

On Friday, President George W. Bush and Treasury Department officials said they were open to the idea of using money from the already-approved $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program for short-term loans to auto makers.

It's true that such a gesture won't be enough to save the troubled industry. Nor should it be the final word on a rescue. Creation of a "car czar," as called for in a House proposal, is essential to ensuring that Detroit lives up to its part of the bargain.

But at least a loan would buy time. Without it, an already-bad recession surely will get much worse.

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., broke ranks with his party to support the auto rescue plan. His Republican colleagues justified their failure to act last week by pointing to auto unions' refusal to accept a major cut in wages before new contracts are negotiated next year. It's a bogus excuse.

Autoworkers unions, like auto industry executives, share the blame for the U.S. industry's troubles. Some contract provisions they pushed for in the past, such as providing full pay for limited periods of time to workers at shuttered plants, are difficult to defend.

Still, even if every unionized auto employee were to work for free, it would cut just 5 percent off the retail cost of Ford, GM and Chrysler cars. The difference in the wages and benefits earned by Big Three workers and their counterparts who make Toyotas and Hondas in nonunion plants is about $10 an hour, mostly because workers at foreign-owned plants receive less generous fringe benefits.

The Big Three also pay fixed costs to cover health benefits for retirees, but those benefits are not exceptionally generous. They represent the equivalent of about $15 an hour in labor costs for Ford, GM and Chrysler. The real problem is that the Big Three companies have been around so long — and have increased efficiency by streamlining the number of employees — that there are large numbers of retirees relative to the number of active workers.

The $15 billion federal loan deal to the automakers is just 1/46th the size of the $700 billion bailout plan approved by Congress in October, but the auto plan has been subjected to much greater scrutiny. Senate Republicans, for example, resisted attempts to limit CEO pay in the October version of the auto plan, yet now they're insisting on abrogating existing labor contracts.

Sending U.S. car companies into bankruptcy could hasten their demise and put a huge strain on a national economy that already is extremely fragile. An industry turnaround won't be easy. But impoverishing autoworkers wouldn't make success any more likely.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.