Here's A Complete Timeline Of The General Motors Recall, Starting In The Late '90s

General Motors has now recalled over 2.6 million vehicles for ignition switch failures that have led to 13 deaths, and Congress is getting involved.

Tuesday, GM CEO Mary Barra and David Friedman, acting administration of the National Highway Transportation Safety Committee (NHTSA) will testify before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, to answer the question, "Why Did It Take So Long?"

In a background memo, the Committee on Energy and Commerce laid out a full timeline of facts and events leading up to where the recall stands now. The information is based on thousands of pages of documents submitted by GM and NHTSA.

The memo notes that "until additional documents have been received, the information in the timeline is preliminary and incomplete." But it's helpful to have the relevant information in one place, and the timeline makes it clear that this problem, while in the news over the past few months, has been in the making for more than a decade.

Here's the timeline; you can read the full memo here.