On January 7, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979 (Public Law 96-185) into law.



The Act granted to Chrysler $1.5 billion to save the company from bankruptcy. Twenty-eight years later in 2008, President George W. Bush authorized $17.4 billion to again bailout Chrysler in addition to the other two major American automobile manufacturers, Ford and General Motors.