In between sessions and a meeting, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown called on his constituents to bail out the Big Three auto makers, saying he believes the auto industry can repay $25 billion in additional loans “within a few years.”

Brown, in a telephone press conference, said to reject the loan would be “catastrophic” to Ohio’s blue-collar workforce and an additional drain on the national economic system.

Ohio’s senior senator, George Voinovich, is also backing the bailout.

“I strongly believe this legislation should be voted on next week. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wait any longer,” Voinovich said.

Brown said executives from Detroit’s three major auto makers, who flew in private jets to ask for federal funding last month, will take a $1 a year salary. Ford Motor Co. executives presented a business plan to return to a pretax profit or break even by 2011 and will cancel all management employees’ 2009 bonuses and will not pay any merit increases for salaried employees next year.

Ford also promises to sell five corporate aircraft, Brown said.

The Big Three includes General Motors, Ford and Daimler Chrysler.

“(The automakers) have come forward with a plan and I believe they have met the test,” Brown said. “Based on reasonable assumptions, they can repay these loans.”

“We have two options here,” Brown said. “Provide bridge loans or allow the economy to drive off the bridge.”

The banking industry side-stepped regulations in its October bailout, not so with the Big Three, Brown said.

The problem, he said, could be in perception of the auto industry as a whole.

“People don’t think (the automakers) deserve a bailout because they have not kept up with foreign technology or energy efficient initiatives,” Brown said. “But this time really is different. In the last five years the auto industry has been through an incredible change.”

Brown said the focus should be on blue-collar workers and working class economics.

“This is a typical Wall Street bias,” he said. “We are looking at something that will effect hundreds of thousands of employees, people who work with their hands, people who take their showers at the end of the day instead of before work.”

Brown acknowledges this bailout, which Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson opposes strongly, will be a tough sell in the Senate.