WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's top auto adviser today offered an optimistic outlook for taxpayers, anticipating the government would lose less than previously predicted on the $85 billion auto industry bailout, reported The Detroit News.

Weeks before General Motors Co. is set to launch a public offering, auto czar Ron Bloom strongly defended the government's rescue of the auto industry.

The bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and auto finance companies will be "at a cost that will almost certainly be a small faction of even the most optimistic predictions," Bloom told an audience at George Washington University Law School today.

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department narrowed its predicted loss on the bailout to $17 billion, down from an initial projected loss of $44 billion in 2009. Bloom didn't specify how he much he thought taxpayers might lose.

He praised the efforts that GM and Chrysler have made to date.

"The talented and energetic directors and management teams at GM and Chrysler in full partnership with the UAW have already made a huge amount of progress," Bloom said.

Bloom, who is overseeing the government's 61 percent stake in GM and will help decide how much the government will offer for sale, didn't comment on the IPO.

Bloom, a former investment banker and adviser to the United Steelworkers union, offered an unstinting defense of the government's auto bailout, saying the administration "had accomplished everything we set out to do."

He said GM and Chrysler - and their unions - shared in the blame for the automakers' near collapse in 2008.

"The companies and their unions cannot be absolved of all responsibility for their part in this great American tragedy," Bloom said. "The companies allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security and the unions went along for the ride," he said.

Bloom said both sides weren't facing the problems in the runup to the companies' requests for bailouts.

"Neither party was willing to face the seismic economic shifts that were occurring all around them," Bloom said.

But he said what finally turned around Detroit automakers was the threat of collapse.

"As Samuel Johnson famously said 'Nothing focuses the mind like an imminent hanging.' And GM and Chrysler could clearly see the noose," Bloom said.

Bloom noted the auto rescue's intense unpopularity - "everybody still thinks it was a bad idea" - but said they had saved GM and Chrysler because it was right.

"Over time - knock wood - people will appreciate that GM and Chrysler have in fact fundamentally changed and we've saved a million jobs," Bloom said. "This will be recorded as an important moment when the government did the right thing."

He also explained why he thought Ford Motor Co. didn't need a federal bailout. He noted that Ford had borrowed $23.4 billion in late 2006 to guard against a rainy day - a move he partially attributed to good luck.

He said if GM and Chrysler had failed it would have forced Ford into bankruptcy because of the collapse of the supply base that all three companies use.

He said Ford is still doing better than its domestic rivals.

"(Ford) is a little bit further along. They got the memo a little sooner. They did have some luck. They've had a huge amount of hard work and they did it in the best way imaginable benefitting from what we did," Bloom said, calling Ford "a spectacular company."

In the end, the administration didn't just save two auto companies - but a whole sector of the economy.

"The reality is we saved the automobile industry - and everbody who's connected to that industry benefitted," Bloom said.