When General Motors and Chrysler asked Washington for more money last week they took very different approaches. In exchange for an extra $17 billion from taxpayers  on top of the $13 billion it had gotten since December  G.M. said it would reduce costs by shuttering plants, cutting brands and slashing 47,000 jobs, about a fifth of its remaining work force.

For its $5.3 billion  on top of the $4.3 billion it has received since December  Chrysler offered little more than an assurance that it has already cut costs and accomplished most of what it had to do to become a valuable, viable company. It offered to trim production by a paltry 100,000 units  leaving it with capacity to make almost one million vehicles more than it will sell this year  on the questionable assumption that demand, and its market share, will bounce back next year.

Chrysler said the only reason it was back asking for more money so soon was that the car market was worse than it had expected two months ago.

This cavalier approach to the public purse raises a very big question. If Chrysler is really on track for a turnaround and all it needs is some financing to get over a bad patch in sales and debt markets, why doesn’t Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80 percent of the company, put up the money itself? Why should taxpayers have to take the risk? That’s what private equity funds like Cerberus are supposed to do.