A report released Sunday by a government watchdog was critical of the U.S. Treasury Department's handling of the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.

The report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief (SIGTARP) says the government did not show why closing dealerships was the right thing to do and may have hurt businesses and the economy.

"(The) Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses," the report stated.

According to SIGTARP, those decisions resulted in "potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls - all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decision's broader economic impact."