WASHINGTON—Lawmakers prodded General Motors Co. Chief Executive Mary Barra for details of the auto maker’s handling of a faulty ignition-switch recall at a hearing on Tuesday.
Several said they would propose new legislation to tighten regulation, increase funding for investigations, and punish companies that conceal defects.
Tuesday’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee put a spotlight on multiple failures on the part of the auto maker and the regulators over the years to detect and recall defective switches used in as many as 2.6 million small cars.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) said he planned to reintroduce legislation that he says would “prevent companies, such as GM, from concealing evidence of wrongdoing that puts our public health and safety at risk.”
Ms. Barra called a 2005 decision by a GM engineer not to fix a faulty ignition switch designed for the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt “very disturbing” and “unacceptable,” but declined to answer many other questions put by lawmakers.
She repeatedly told members of the subcommittee that she didn’t know details behind the delayed recall. Cars equipped with the faulty ignition switches can be jarred out of the on position, disabling air bags, power steering and power brakes. GM has now linked the switch failure to 13 deaths to accidents involving the cars in which air bags didn’t deploy.
Ms. Barra said the company has retained Kenneth Feinberg as a consultant to advise the company on how to handle its ignition switch liability. Mr. Feinberg handled victim’s compensation from terrorists’ attacks on Sept. 11, 2001; the fatal Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; and the Boston Marathon bombing.
The company has faced pressure to compensate families of motorists who died in crashes linked to the faulty ignition switches.
Ms. Barra said at the hearing that GM hasn’t yet made any decisions on whether to set up a fund to compensate families. “We have just begun to work with Mr. Feinberg,” Ms. Barra said.
She added that it would take “30 to 60 days” for the company to set a course of action. Ms. Barra did say GM will “set a new standard” in how it resolves the issue.
Ms. Barra took the rare step Monday of meeting with 22 victim’s family members who had come to Washington to put a face on the statistics. During the meeting, she apologized for their suffering.
GM isn’t liable for deaths that occurred before the predecessor company’s July 2009 bankruptcy filing. The terms of the Chapter 11 filing extinguished the auto maker’s liability for prebankruptcy incidents.
Thirteen deaths have been linked to the ignition switch problem, which can cause car engines to abruptly shut down and prevented air bags from deploying in accidents.
GM waited nearly a decade to recall the 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other vehicles over the ignition-switch issue.
In addition to GM, David Friedman, acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was due to testify on whether the auto safety regulator missed chances to identify the defect. Mr. Friedman’s written testimony indicates that the agency intends to pin blame on GM, saying it failed to share “critical information” about ignition-switch problems.
Lawmakers are expected to ask Mr. Friedman about why the agency declined a request by the chief of its defects-assessment division in 2007 to open a formal probe into why air bags in the 2003-2006 model year Chevrolet Cobalts and some Saturns weren’t deploying.
The chief had said that complaints had been coming in to NHTSA about the problem since 2005, according to a memo prepared by congressional Republicans, but a panel within NHTSA’s office of defects investigation decided not to pursue the investigation because it didn’t see a discernible trend.
In his prepared testimony, Mr. Friedman said the agency’s defects investigators “did not have clear evidence of a connection between the ignition switch being in the accessory mode and the air bag non-deployment.”
Earlier on Tuesday, House Democrats said their investigators found that GM received at least 133 complaints over nearly a decade about cars that were stalling when drivers went over a bump or inadvertently jostled the ignition system.
The subcommittee’s Democratic staff analyzed data in GM’s own warranty database, which tracks claims filed by customers for cars that are still under warranty.
The complaints centered mostly on the Saturn Ion, with 87 of the total complaints involving that vehicle. There were 22 complaints involving the Chevrolet Cobalt.
Ms. Barra, who took over as CEO in January, has remained in the spotlight during the recalls. She has taken full responsibility for the delay while spearheading efforts within the company to clear any roadblocks from an internal investigation now being handled by Chicago attorney Anton Valukas.
Ms. Barra’s testimony and tone were all aimed at convincing legislators, employees, current customers and potential buyers she is determined to remake GM and its bureaucracy to ensure the auto maker never again allows defective cars to remain on American roadways, potentially endangering their owners.
The company’s own disclosures and depositions leading to the recall suggests a cultural landscape where employees worked in silos, isolated from other departments and critical information.
New documentation supplied to a congressional subcommittee by parts supplier Delphi Automotive PLC suggests Ray DeGiorgio, the project engineer for the Cobalt ignition switch, signed off on a change to the faulty ignition switch made by Delphi in 2006, meaning the company was taking active steps back then to handle the issue.
Mr. DeGiorgio wasn’t made available by the company to comment. He still works at GM.
The scenario appears to contradict the testimony Mr. DeGiorgio made last year in response to questions from an attorney representing the family of Brooke Melton, a Georgia woman killed in a crash of her Cobalt. In the April 2013 deposition, Mr. DeGiorgio said that “I’m pretty sure it was never communicated to us or to me” when asked whether anyone from Delphi had told him that the GM supplier changed two key parts used in the ignition switch—the plunger and the spring.
On Monday, GM recalled 1.5 million vehicles world-wide for electronic steering issues and doubled the first-quarter charge it took for recall expenses to $750 million. The auto maker has now recalled more than 6.3 million vehicles globally since February.
Corrections & Amplifications
Documents suggest Ray DeGiorgio was the GM engineer who signed off on an ignition-switch change in 2006. An earlier version of this article incorrectly used the surname DiGiorgio.
Write to Jeff Bennett at jeff.bennett@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com
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