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When Detroit's Big Three CEOs return to Washington on Dec. 2 with a plan tailored to sell Congress on a $25 billion bridge loan, they will try to convince lawmakers that they are in the throes of big restructuring moves that will bring profits back as soon as the economy picks up.

Sources at the companies and in Congress say that General Motors (GM), Ford Motor (F), and Chrysler are mulling symbolic moves like executive pay cuts and scaling back use of corporate planes.

But given the huge debt load they may be taking on, they might have to show more substantial ways to save money. Congress will be allocating billions in taxpayer dollars to invest in the Big Three carmakers, so the lawmakers should know what the prospects are for these companies to compete should the bridge loan see them through the downturn.

Close to the Brink

It's not pretty. All three companies are already carrying massive debt and interest payments that will sap their ability to develop and market new models once the economy turns around. GM has $43 billion in debt and Ford has $24.9 billion in borrowings. "Their debt burden has been escalating for some time," says Mark Oline, managing director for debt-rating agency Fitch & Co. "These companies will be smaller so their earnings capacity will be smaller. The interest will be a big burden."

Let's look first at GM, which is closer to the brink of collapse than Ford. GM already pays more than $3 billion a year in interest. JPMorgan (JPM) analyst Himanshu Patel estimates that GM needs $17 billion in government loans to make it through 2009. That would add another $900 million in interest. That means GM would have close to $60 billion in debt and more than $4 billion a year in interest payments.

Plus, GM has to pay back $2.3 billion next year, $200 million in 2010, and $1.7 billion in 2011, according to company financial statements. All of that will require cash that could go into new cars, marketing, or disposing of brands.

Health-Care Trust Could Help

Ford pays $2.4 billion a year in interest. While the company is in a better cash position, since it borrowed $23 billion while credit markets were liquid, its interest costs also would rise.

The carmakers racked up huge debt over the past few years largely to fund pension plans, buy out workers, close plants, and set up a union-led health-care trust that will hand management of medical benefits to the UAW.

GM President and COO Frederick A. Henderson said in a Nov. 18 interview that the debt is only a big burden if GM can't improve profits. A union health-care trust, called a voluntary employee benefits association, or VEBA, would save $4.8 billion a year in cash outlays. That deal and other union concessions will make the company more profitable once the market turns around (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/08).

Online bill paying has certainly made a nagging monthly chore easier. But there's still usually multiple Web sites to juggle -- and passwords to remember.

Now, there are several services that promise to consolidate your bills and let you pay them all in one place. We tested three services to see if they could streamline our tasks: Quicken Bill Pay, PayTrust and MyCheckFree.

There certainly seems to be a market for such services. A 2007 survey from Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop found that those surveyed pay on average 11.5 bills a month. Seventy-four percent of surveyed households pay at least one bill online. And on average, respondents said they spend about two hours a month dealing with the logistics of paying bills.

Quicken Bill Pay (quickenbillpay.com) is a product of Intuit's Quicken money-management system. It costs $9.95 a month for the first 20 payments, allowing you to route 10 different bank accounts through Quicken Bill Pay. Additional sets of five payments are $2.49 per set. And there's a 30-day free trial for up to 20 payments.

You can also use Bill Pay with the desktop version of Quicken software, a program to track bills, spending and saving plans. If you do, you get some extra features with Bill Pay. (Our tester already had the desktop software.) That desktop software costs between $49.99 and $139.99 and is available in a CD-ROM version or for download directly from the site.

Setting up the account took us almost half an hour -- and we had to enter a ton of information. By the time we found our checkbook with our account number and the addresses and information of all the payees (the company or person you owe money to) -- the Web site had already timed out, and we had to log back in. It then took two more days for Quicken to verify our checking account.

Once we set everything up, it was fairly easy and convenient to pay all of our bills, including our two credit cards and our cellphone bill. It also allows you to schedule payments up to one year in advance so you don't miss any payments. However, we couldn't pay our cable and electricity bills because those accounts are in our roommate's name.

We liked the financial overview set-up of the Web page that let us keep constant tabs on our "cash flow center." The site monitored the amount in our checking and savings accounts and the amount owed on credit cards and "property and debt" to calculate the bottom line: our up-to-the-minute net worth.

PayTrust (paytrust.com), another product of Intuit, has three different services for paying bills: Total Bill Management ($12.95 per month for 30 transactions), PayAnyone ($2.95 per month for no free transactions) and PayAnyone plus E-bills ($4.95 per month for no free transactions). Additional transactions under any of the three plans cost 50 cents. (Receiving and paying a bill each counts as one transaction).

We received an email each time a new bill came in. That got a little annoying, since we were also getting notice emails from each of our payees as well. The service allows you to manually approve bills or set up automatic payments. A neat feature: You can set up payments for a range of debts, including babysitters and loan payments to friends. When we had problems setting up our account, customer service solved our issues over the phone in less than five minutes.

You can also export your payment information to online bill-managing programs or order a CD of your bills for recordkeeping purposes.

MyCheckFree (mycheckfree.com) allows users to pay bills from over 400 different providers. But that didn't include our bank, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. or our student-loan lender, SLM Corp., commonly known as Sallie Mae. MyCheckFree charges no fees for the site, but Lori Stepp, a spokesperson, says there's a chance that your bank might charge you to use the service.

The site did carry our cable company and our power company. But since those bills were not in our name, we couldn't add them to our MyCheckFree profile -- and thus couldn't pay them via the service.

Paying for newspaper subscriptions and cellphone service is an option through MyCheckFree, but users need to have their account number handy. It was easy to pay our Macy's credit card bill. We just needed to give our credit card number.

Overall, the site was easy to navigate. But since it didn't allow us to make payments on our regular credit card or our student loan, we didn't find it all that useful. In response, Ms. Stepp said that she encourages consumers to pay bills through their bank if it's easier, but that MyCheckFree can save bill payers the headache of "having to remember 10 different passwords for 10 different sites."

Whether you choose to pay your bills with a service or on your own, the fact remains -- you still have to pay them.

-- Shelly Banjo and Brittany Hite contributed to this article.