Posted by
Lucas J. Boy on Monday, August 03, 2009 6:04:29 PM
The aptly-named “Clunkers For Cash” program, touted as a shinning example of liberal enlightenment, has crashed and burned in the parking lot before it even got on the road. The program, which was funded to run for four months, has gone broke after six days. Maybe Joe Biden was involved in the planning and projections. (After all, he admitted that Team Obama had clearly misjudged the state of the economy’s malaise when they were drafting the Stimulus Plan.)
With the government’s website bogged down and the inept National Highway Safety Administration hamstrung by sticky red tape, frustrated dealerships have to either cover the cost themselves or put orders on hold as they wait to be reimbursed by Uncle Barack. To make matters worse, the EPA keeps resetting the mileage standard that qualifies a particular make and model for the cash payout. One guy in Texas had signed the papers and was waiting for the deal to be finalized when the dealer called to say his trade-in clunker, which had just barely met the EPA’s 18 MPG threshold, no longer qualified because, for some reason, the regulatory agency that protects us from global warming arbitrarily and capriciously raised the standard to 19 MPG. So the dude had to drive his clunker home, polluting all the way.
If this is an example of the genius of “central planning”, the nimble managerial finesse of bureaucracy and sound environmental policy, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Democrats’ dream of administering—controlling—the health care of every single soul in America. On the other hand, ObamaCare is designed to remove broken down old clunkers like grandpa and grandma from the medical roster.
Of course, the Dems will spin this clunker business into a resounding success, giving them the pretext to “borrow” even more of your money to subsidize the next round. Unlike the rest of Obama’s Stimulus Boondoggle, this program actually did stimulate the economy and car sales because it amounted to, essentially, a tax refund. When government directly gives back to the tax-payer a sizeable portion of his own money—money collected in the first place by confiscatory tax schemes—no wonder it stimulates a market economy.