Lawmakers in Washington and cash-strapped consumers aren’t the only ones refusing to buy what executives at Detroit’s Big Three auto makers are selling.

Several professors have pushed back against the industry’s claim that three million jobs will be lost within a year of Detroit’s collapse, recently calling those figures “laughable” and “fanciful.”

“The whole point of a modern Chapter 11 is to preserve the jobs that exist,” said Douglas Baird, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “There is nothing about the fact of a bankruptcy that means that all of the jobs in the industry disappear.”

The Big Three -- General Motors (GM), Ford (F) and privately-held Chrysler LLC -- unsuccessfully argued to lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week that they urgently need $25 billion in “bridge loans” to prevent bankruptcies that would be catastrophic for the economy. Lawmakers decided to punt a bailout vote until after Thanksgiving.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner used the mass job-loss argument in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal this week.

“Short-term government support to bridge the current financial crisis will enable GM to continue as an engine for prosperity and as a creator of vehicles and technologies that America needs. Such assistance will save millions of jobs now, and produce enormous benefits for years to come,” he wrote.

Even the very legislation being debated in Congress said its purpose is to preserve and promote the 355,000 workers directly employed by the auto industry and “an additional 4,500,000 workers in the United States employed in related industries.”

Backing up those arguments is the Center for Automotive Research, the Ann Arbor, Mich. nonprofit that receives funding from the auto industry. In a widely cited report, the center has warned the collapse of the Big Three could light a match to the inflamed economy, slashing up to three million jobs and costing $150 billion in tax revenue over three years.

CAR says if there were a 100% reduction in the operations of GM, Ford and Chrysler LLC, the U.S. would lose the 239,000 jobs employed at those manufacturers, nearly 975,000 jobs from suppliers and indirect businesses as well as an additional 1.7 million jobs due to expenditure-induced cuts.

And that’s for the first year alone, as the research group predicts job losses of 2.5 million in 2010 and 1.8 million the following year.

“It’s in their interest to fan the flames and say whatever they can justify with a straight face,” said David Yermack, a professor of finance at the NYU School of Business. “You can imagine one of the first places to go under” would be auto industry-funded research groups.

Pointing to the funding disclosure page on CAR's Web site, Chairman David Cole said in an email: “You will see that we are beholden to no one. A penalty for knowledge is this kind of accusation.”

CAR said a large portion of its funding is considered “cost sharing,” which include contributions from auto-related companies such as parts supplier Delphi and navigation systems maker Navteq as well as from Ford and GM. However, those cost sharing contributions were made to support two projects, neither of which were the job loss study.

“The job loss study was not funded or directed by any auto maker, supplier or trade group,” said Kristin Dziczek, a senior project manager at CAR.

Nevertheless, Yermack argues the job-loss numbers overstate the situation.

“Americans are not going to stop driving cars, and if GM, Ford and Chrysler disappear, other companies will expand to soak up their market share, adding jobs in the process,” Yermack argued in a column in The Wall Street Journal.

He also challenged the oft-stated claim that Detroit still accounts for 1 in 10 jobs in America.

“It would be astonishing if that were true. It’s just preposterous. That’s one that even fails the straight-face rule,” said Yermack.

President-elect Obama has largely stayed out of the back-and-forth on Capitol Hill, but did tell “60 Minutes” a collapse of the auto industry would be a “disaster in this kind of environment." Like many Democratic leaders, Obama supports assistance to Detroit, just not a “blank check," he said in the interview. 

Obama argued the assistance must be centered around a plan that is sustainable for the U.S. auto industry so that “we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere.”

The time for a “bridge loan to somewhere” has already passed, some opponents of the bailout have argued.

“We would do better to set this money on fire rather than using it to keep these dying firms on life support,” Yermack wrote

Instead, some have pointed to the the successful restructuring of the airline industry that followed a wave of bankruptcy filings as a possible model for Detroit.

“It wasn’t as if all of the jobs in the aviation industry suddenly shut down. That’s just not what happens in modern day bankruptcy filings,” said Baird.

Yermack echoed that sentiment, saying: “The example of the airline industry is one that should give everyone a lot of hope that something very rational will happen in the auto industry.”

He argued bankruptcy filings for the auto makers would allow badly-needed restructuring at the companies and said it doesn't matter that the labor market has already lost 1.2 million jobs year-to-date. 

“You don’t treat a sick patient any differently because of the weather outside,” said Yermack.