GM Probe Poses Test for Michigan Lawmaker

WASHINGTON—As he leads a congressional investigation into ignition defects in General Motors Co. GM -1.41% vehicles, Rep. Fred Upton might decide to look hardest at the auto maker's actions, or he might focus on regulatory lapses on the part of the federal government.

Whatever approach the Michigan Republican takes, he probably won't find it easy. GM is the largest company in Mr. Upton's home state. Regulators, who have faced budget constraints as well as criticism from his party, are likely to push back on questions about their oversight.

And a key law that governs auto safety is one Mr. Upton himself wrote 14 years ago, and which some lawmakers now say needs to be tougher.

These sometimes-conflicting currents will provide a stark test of Mr. Upton's leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and how he navigates them could help decide the direction of the government's broader response to ignition-switch defects that have been linked to 13 deaths.

The panel's investigations subcommittee, led by Tim Murphy (R., Pa.), will hold a hearing Tuesday into why it took GM so long to recall millions of vehicles that might have the switch defect.

In his role as chairman, the 60-year-old Mr. Upton follows in the footsteps of another Michigan lawmaker, Democrat John Dingell, an aggressive overseer known for using subpoenas to squeeze information out of reluctant witnesses, a tactic now standard in congressional probes. Tuesday's hearing will be held in a committee room that Upton last year formally named the John D. Dingell Room.

Mr. Upton, who hasn't lost his impulse to work across the aisle, despite the rise of the Tea Party movement, is less likely than Mr. Dingell was to wield the gavel like a hammer.

Mr. Dingell so relished his oversight role that he remained chairman of the investigations subcommittee while chairing the full committee.

Tuesday's hearing is expected to feature GM's new chief executive, Mary Barra, and David Friedman, acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

As recently as last Thursday, Mr. Upton said he was still working on preparations for Tuesday, and wasn't ready to draw conclusions about who was to blame for the ignition defect.

Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates who know him say that Mr. Upton hasn't shown any signs of giving GM favorable treatment just because it is one of his state's biggest employers.

A memo released Sunday by Republicans on the House panel bolsters that case. The memo indicates that lawmakers will press both GM and NHTSA hard on why they missed several opportunities during the past decade to alert the public to the dangers posed by cars that could suddenly shut down, disabling airbags, power steering and power brakes.

Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA head and the president emeritus of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said it is hard to tell which direction Mr. Upton might go, adding that he had "expressed a great deal of sympathy" toward the victims of the crashes linked to the ignition defect. Family members of victims who lost their lives in those crashes will be on hand at the hearing.

Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, the subcommittee's top Democrat, said Friday that she will have "pointed questions" for Ms. Barra. "There are serious questions emerging about what GM knew, when it knew it, and when it informed the public," she said.

Mr. Upton said Ms. Barra reached out to him directly last week, pre-empting a phone call from the committee chairman. "She offered to be cooperative," he said, adding that "every indication" is that she has been.

Since he took the chairmanship in 2011, Mr. Upton has used the panel's vast reach to focus mostly on what he perceives as missteps by the Obama administration, such as problems with the 2010 health-care law.

The main corporate investigation on his watch has focused on drug contamination at a small Massachusetts company.

In that case the committee concluded that federal regulators failed to address warning signs.

But cars are a different matter. Mr. Upton wrote the 2000 law known as the TREAD Act, written after he led an investigation into rollovers involving Firestone tires on Ford Motor Co. F +0.65% vehicles that were blamed for more than 100 deaths. The law, which established an early warning system to help regulators spot worrisome trends in areas such as injuries and consumer complaints, is regarded as a highlight of the lawmaker's career. The committee will be looking at whether the law has gaps that might need to be closed.

"We thought we fixed it," Mr. Upton said of the legislation. "Is there a loophole here? We'll find out."

Ms. Claybrook, whose group sued regulators to make public some of the data it receives under the 2000 law's reporting system, said the law's shortcomings are compounded by the fact that "NHTSA has gotten very secretive, and there's not a lot of transparency."

Under current rules, auto makers are required to provide regulators with routine data on deaths, injuries, property damage, consumer complaints, warranty claims and field reports from mechanics. NHTSA ended up treating much of the information as confidential business information and shielded it from the public.

Critics also say the law left too little leeway to use criminal penalties to deter wrongdoing. Under current auto-safety laws, such penalties only apply for submitting knowingly false information to the agency.

There is no criminal penalty under those laws for delaying a recall. That is why the Justice Department's recent $1.2 billion settlement with Toyota Motor Co. 7203.TO +0.71% was considered a potential game-changer. Prosecutors used wire-fraud charges as a tool to go after an auto maker that had failed to conduct a recall