By every indication, the Obama administration’s “Cash for Clunkers” program has been a roaring success: around a quarter-million cars have been sold with the rebate money, and all of the sold cars give better gas mileage than the traded-in clunkers. The economy is slightly improved, the environment is slightly better, and all is well. The program has been so successful — last week, cars were rolling off dealers’ lots at nearly the same rate they had before the Great Recession started — it’s already out of money. In fact, and this is classic Washington, D.C. nonsense, the program is so successful, it may be discontinued.
You see, Congress is going on vacation. The House passed a $2 billion extension of the program before heading home, and if the Senate doesn’t pass the same thing before they check out at the end of the week, “Cash for Clunkers” will be history. Luckily, things are looking better in the Senate than was believed yesterday, as two key senators — Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine — have now come out in support of it. That doesn’t guarantee passage, but it’s a good sign that public support has built to the point that lawmakers are feeling the need to — gasp! — give citizens what they want. Conservatives, needless to say, are against such socialistic economic stimulus and are mightily huffing and puffing, hoping someone other than their usual followers might notice.
This article appears in Best of Charlotte 2009.
Some of the “clunkers” being traded in run perfectly well. These should be given to people who don’t have transportation and don’t conveniently live close to public transit. Even the autoless living on the busline could benefit from a car to enable them to seek work – or carry out activities we vehicle folk take for granted – that may be beyond public transit limits.
The cash for clunkers program doesn’t help much those who really need a new car. $4500 won’t go far if one lacks the means to make monthly payments for the rest of the cost of a new or later model vehicle. Most of the people who are benefitting from this program could afford to buy a new vehicle anyway. The program helps but as usual those who need it most get the short end of the stick.
Further, why not subsidize public transit to lower the cost of riding? Free transit for seniors and the disabled? With all the hulabaloo about going green, this should have been at the top of the administration’s stimulus agenda. By the way, where are all these stimulus jobs we were promised? Looks like the only group who made out like bandits in the economic stimulus package were the banksters who wrecked the joint and the war profiteers who’re getting more loot from the Afghanistan fiasco.
why would someone trade in a paid off car for a new car payment?
I have four paid off cars all over 10 years old and they run well. I aint tradin em in.
Typical govt nonsense.