Did ‘Cash for Clunkers’ just put Obamacare on the junk heap? Update: House adds $2 billion more to re-start the program; Schumer seeks $4 billion
“Cash for Clunkers” — a program that our genius financial managers in Washington had skillfully budgeted to run, appropriately enough, until around Halloween — has been suspended after just a few days. There were many “unforeseen” problems, meaning that nobody who created the program knew anything about what they were doing or the possible pitfalls. The architects of Cash for Clunkers couldn’t organize a two hybrid car funeral.
The Obama administration is attempting to use the fact that the program was popular with consumers as evidence that it was a “success,” but that only serves as evidence of government incompetence. Unfortunately for Obama & Company, many people are aware that sometimes “too successful” is far more expensive than “didn’t work at all.” If Apollo 11 had been “too successful” by the Obama administration’s definition, the crew would have overshot the moon, and they’d be dead and halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. “That’s one small loss of men, one giant leap for bureaucracy.”
The fact is that Cash for Clunkers could not have lasted for very long in its present form even if the government didn’t run out of budgeted taxpayer money, for reasons I outlined in part here.
In the private sector — which the government hopes to compete with using money confiscated from the private sector (some “competition”) — when you create a sale or promotion of some sort, you must make sure you’re covered in case it is very successful. Poor planning leads to unhappy customers, which equals going out of business. Fortunately for the government, they have no such consequence as “going out of business.” In government, incompetence is rewarded.
In private sector business, there are just as many execs who have been fired because they didn’t plan for what to do if a sale went “too well” as there are who created sales programs that didn’t work at all.
But people are catching on, and you’re seeing that reflected in the poll numbers for government-run health care and even in Obama’s plummeting approval ratings.
This sums up the concern of any American with an I.Q. above Tim Geithner’s shoe size:
“If they can’t administer a program like this, I’d be a little concerned about my health insurance,” car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.
Unfortunately for Obama, Pelosi, Frank, et al, this is going to be an oft-repeated observation. We may be intimidated by the size and scope of health care and think that somebody else may know better than we do, but when we see those same people screw up a freakin’ car sale, the mask comes off and we don’t want them messing with our health too.
We don’t need to go back far in time to find a similar government screw-up. Remember the well thought out “converter box” coupon program? The one that quickly exceeded the $1.34 billion funding limit set by Congress, causing a delay in the transition and costing an additional few billion dollars to taxpayers and private industry? “Cash for Clunkers” is brought to us by most of the same people — the same ones who will bring us our “free” health care.
The White House and Congress are going to go all out to resuscitate Cash for Clunkers. They have to — because the total failure of this “wild success” may well kill their dreams of National Health Care, and they know it.
In Cash for Clunkers, old cars are turned in and put in a junk heap — even if the cars still run and could be of use to somebody else. Americans in their twilight years should most certainly be wary of the architects of Cash for Clunkers being in control of their health care.
But hey, if this billion-dollar hunk of mis-management knocks Obamacare in the dirt, then it’s money well-spent. Who says Obama and Congress can’t spend wisely once in a while?
Update: The fate of Cash for Clunkers should have been apparent back when the federal computer system supporting the program’s website crashed 15 minutes after the program launched.
Update II: In an “emergency measure,” the House has just added $2 billion more to Cash for Clunkers to re-start the program.
Update III: Super-weasel Chuck Schumer is seeking $4 billion more! Do I hear 10!?
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Has it really only been six months? Seems a lot longer than that.
2012 can’t come quick enough.
The kicker is that this is one program that the DC gang probably did read up on, unlike the Gov’t Health Takeoevr bill.
they can’t run the “cash for clunkers” program, but yet they want us to trust them with our health or euthanasia program?
Looks like Sen. Dudd has prostate cancer, Rush wonder’s where he’ll go for his surgery, England or Canada since the giverment health care programs are so much better than America’s. After all you can’t trust American insurance companies to do what’s right even for the all exalted congress critters.
“cash for clunkers” another unsuccessful democrapic program…maybe they didn’t read the bill, eh?
Hmm, “Cash for Clunkers” should be worked into the theme for mid term elections next year.
A wholelotta Congressional Clunkers that need to be traded in.
God, I hope so.
No problem there, his surgery will be provided by the taxpayer with no expense spared since Dud and his colleagues are exempt from Obama Care. No insurance company is needed.
No problem there, his surgery will be provided by the taxpayer with no expense spared since Dud and his colleagues are exempt from Obama Care. No insurance company is needed.
– House OKs $2 billion in additional funds for cash for clunkers program. Senate votes next week.
So the cost is only 300% of the projected cost.
Not bad for a government program.
Gee, all one has to do is see how the governmet mismanages the VA, IHS, Medicare/Medicaid to know you don’t want them involved in health mismanagement than they already are.
Free healthcare will be a runaway success, until the cash for geezers kicks in.
If someone needed a new car, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to get a $4500 trade-in? Our neighbor used this program to get rid of her ancient Ford Explorer, and got a new fuel efficient Honda. Overnight, the Federal government artificially spiked the value of trade-ins. Of course, the program quickly ran out of money. Why couldn’t those fools see this as a possibility? Oh, yes – they are “fools”. The Libtards make decisions not on what makes sense, but on what feels good. The Libtard dupes have a la-la fairly land utopian world view; Their masters use them to achieve their agenda to centralize power. When are we going to wake up as a nation and drive these tyrants and fools back into their basements?
And that’s just this week.
Exhibit A: Oprah & KFC’s Grilled Chicken fiasco
Just more proof that our gov can’t see the unintended consequences of funding a dumb idea.
Who got the money that was spent? I’ll bet the answer to that question will be very interesting.
Those clunkers they are going to junk-
what will all the little 10 or 15 car lots with a singlewide as a business office, flying Mexican flags, and having names like “Mi Tierra”, “Amigo Auto Sales” and “Fiesta Cars” along I-45 do for stock to sell to our paperless guests from South of the Rio Grande here in soon to be senatorial candidate Mayor Bill White’s ‘sanctuary city’?
Will our undocumented workers have to ride the bus?
We need a few billion for a “dinero por trabajadores sin papeles que necessitan automoviles” program.
I recall a sales promotion from an appliance company that gave you an airline ticket to anywhere in Europe or the USA if you bought an appliance that cost more than a specific amount of money.
Guess what happened? Buy a vacuum cleaner for 200 bux and get a $2000 ticket to Paris and back. Oh, yeah! Great promo. Those execs got fired just to try to save the company.
If The B.O.’s socialist gov’t did that with “their” goods and services, the moron in charge would get a better position in the administration.
Sheesh!
There is a guy I know who had planned to buy a “clunker” from the shop down the road for $1,100 cash. But then the shop owner took the car and got $4,500 for it from the government’s cash for clunkers deal.
Now, this guy can’t find a decent old clunker that he can afford to buy. He needs a car like this to get his sick mother to her hospital treatments, but now she will probably lose both her legs because they can’t find a car to buy. Damn Obama is buying them all up!
What’s this talk of Apollo 11? It never happened– Whoopi told me so.
Yeah. I got a haircut from Elvis when I was abducted by the aliens on the UFO. I took pictures, but all have this gray haze on them.
“I just want to announce that my administration’s program to give away money has proven to be a spectacular success.”
I don’t want this guy managing the till at the 7-11.
I suspect they looked at the average cost of a ticket and figured if customers paid above a certain amount for appliances, then that average cost would be covered.
That kind of thinking so popular with big government do-gooders is a sign of a serious mental defect that doesn’t show up in IQ tests. They can’t grasp the idea people will change their behaviors to respond to changed circumstances. At least they can’t grasp it when it will mess up their plans. It’s too complicated.
Oh well – at least we can get rid of the Clunkers in Congress next yr! Too bad we have to wait til 2012 to get rid of the Big Clunker in the White House.
Bingo! Roland, you get the blue ribbon.
Socialists have no comprehension of the free market. They talk about “change” but they have no idea what it means. They use it as an open-ended promise to take on whatever meaning they ascribe to it at any particular moment.
Intelligent people understand the free market and know that “change” means people (buyers) will change their habits, over their lifetimes, in accordance with their life situation.
Socialists want to micro-manage everyone’s life.
My car is a 96. I could have bought a new one using the program, but I could never bring myself to do that knowing that taxpayers are making up the differance. I saw a news report on the program. The dealer had a row of cars, “clunkers” he had taken, behind him. 90% of which I would be glad to own. No new car paymments and lower insurance costs means I really don’t care too much about the gallon price of gas.
Let me see if I understand this:
We bailed out two of the automakers.
We bailed out a dozen banks.
We bailed out the auto buyer by giving them a rebate.
Bailed out auto makers (GM/Chrysler)are selling autos to the American people, presumably financed by bailed out banks, to buyers that received a rebate from the Government.
Pravda would never have thought up a story this loony.
Maybe Obama can go on TV and tell that he’s going to personally spit in every 10th burger.
(Too obscure a reference?)
Errah I haven’t been able to find a comparable Prius that can hold as much stuff to replace my ole 2000 Ford Excursion “Exxon Valdez Edition” yet. “Can you name the truck with four wheel drive, smells like a steak and seats thirty-five…Excursionarrowwwww!”
Teddy Kennedy: Buy a 2009 Ford Excursion and go for the Prius name plate option. We’re dealing with liberals here. They won’t notice.
It just kills me to think about all those perfectly good cars being destroyed! What an unbelievable waste for absolutely NO reason! Just think of all the people who could use those cars. So they aren’t terribly gas efficient? SO WHAT??? This is the biggest hoax since Al Gore first opened his pie hole. Bah!!
Another 2 billion dollars, free money!!! Woohoo!!!! Plenty more where they came from. Just think, obamacare runs out of money another few trillions on the way to the rescue. No problem. In a post-modern mindset this is how one defines success. Who cares about unforeseen consequences!?
Classic Doug
Yippie! enough for two more days!
lmao
Odopey = epic fail
actually eight more… lol.
That is not even the worst of it.
They do not understand that it does not matter so much how bad a car’s mileage is. What matters most is how many miles the car is driven. If someone trades in a 15mpg ‘clunker’ they were only driving an average of 100 miles per month for a nice, new, comfortable 35mpg car they’re going to drive 400 miles per month in part because the cost of driving it is so much cheaper, we will get MORE CO2, not less.
They really are mentally defective.
Bamster spending
“Cash for Geezers”?
Come on, Grandpa. We’re going for a ‘ride’.
Congress is definitely run by bonehaeds.
“boneheads” not “bonehaeds”
Either way works for me!
For a nanosecond, I thought about getting rid of my 1998 Jeep Cherokee and then I came to my senses. My Jeep runs well, plenty of space for my mountain bikes, surfboards and camping gear. It gets around 24-25 mpg on the highway and 20 in the city. There are no black boxes attached to it and its paid for. Whew! Best decision I’ve made about a car in a long time. I had no trust in the Feds to even get this program right and I wasn’t surprised about what has happened. Now that the GOP is coming to their senses too and promoting fiscal conservatism (hopefully it won’t just be to get elected), I sent in my voter registration, changing it to the GOP.
I didn’t read all of the comments here, but pray tell, where did this 2 billion come from?
*Just more borrowed money is all this 2B is; Those in D.C. are on borrowed time; The clock runs out for many in 2010 and 2012.
Gee, what’s gonna happen to us when China calls in the debt early?
I’m going to be sick.
Rush nailed this one in addition to the comments you’ve made above.
This is a socially engineered stimulus program for the envronmental wackos, GM, Chrysler and the UAW.
However, as a stimulus it demonstrates that the general idea works. So, instead of creating the unmangeable monsterosity of a beauacracy and having the Obama stimulus program, if you scrapped it all and “spent” the money in the form of tax cuts the economy would explode.
As Rsuh pointed out a comparatively tiny one billion dollar program has out performed the $780 Billion Obama Stimulus plan in one week.
A “wild success” for Democrats is a one billion dollar program that now costs three billion!!
These are the moronic dumbos who want to run our lives for us. Thanks, but no thanks. If we can get enough volunteers, maybe we can superglue the locks on the office doors of this adminstration with the politicians inside. A week locked inside without water should solve all of our problems.
Hey, there you rogue bloggers!
Wanna help crack the 4,000 posting mark on the “Don’t Taze Me Bro’”thread?
It’s two pages back on previous entries now
Remember when the auto makers were begging for their bail out money. They said they had not kept up with public demands, they weren’t making the cars desired by the buying public…smaller more efficient care, BS.
Anyone else notice the big cars now and wonder “what is that new car, a Chrysler or Caddy maybe, nope, a Japanese model Avalon Toyota.
The Big 3 miscalculated alright, in their contracts with the UAW…car design was not the problem.
Somehow I think the founding fathers could never imagine a federal government needing to be involved with transferring wealth from one taxpayer to another to purchase a vehicle. Funny, I can’t find this power in the constitution.
BTW, the environmentalists never consider the energy required to destroy one vehicle and build another. It’s far more fuel efficient to run a vehicle till the wheels fall off before buying another.
The shift supervisor at the printing dept. at the treasury dept. called all off duty printers in for an emergency printing session above and beyond all the worthless paper they were already printing…”full steam ahead we need more money.”
The car dealers’ ads for this program are still running on television – just saw one two seconds ago. That is, of course, because the dealers have already paid for that advertising. Now they’ll be out all that money, on top of the potential sales that will now be lost.
Good job, all you politicians and assorted political hacks. Way to stimulate the economy.
Glenn Beck is reporting that agreeing to the legalize on signing into parts of the CARS.org website gives the government complete and permenant access to everything you do and have on your pc. Glenn and FOXNews “legal babe” Kimberly Guilfoyle say do not signin or agree to the registration conditions.
On July 31st, 2009 at 3:23 pm, Roland said:
Try not to cloud the issue with a bunch of facts, please.
sarc>
I was going to up grade from my ’89 Ford Ranger to a newer vehicle, not a new one, a newer one. Thanks to all the illiterate political hacks now I can’t afford to buy a clunker. Remembering a “clunker” is like “beauty” it is in the eye of the beholder. Bastards
Please, keep that under your hat! Here in Wisconsin we are experiencing some very cool temperatures lately and, just in case CO2 really does warm the atmosphere, we could use more of it. So, if a side benefit of this program is Wisconsin turns into a tropical paradise, $3B seems a small price to pay!
This is third world county stuff…the only difference is we handing out cash instead of food.
Well, when you’re on a spending spree, it sure is hard to stop. What’s another $2 Billion anyway? Petty cash, right congress?
They took “energy research” funds to pay for clunkers.
What this clearly shows is that the government needs to reduce taxes and, therefore, directly put money in the hands of the people.
This cash for clunkers stupidity will have substantive unintended consequences. Here is one possibility, people who are not ready to buy this year will suspend car purchases well into the future waiting for the next round of financial problems in 2010 and the next round of goodies from the government.
Really, why buy anything until it is clear what you will get in terms of goodies. The worse that can happen is no goodies.
Flyoverman, you can probably answer this one for me since you heard Rush too (and I’m trusting that your memory is better than mine)
Rush said, “This whole thing, this whole administration, is no more than a Charlie foxtrot — and if you don’t know what a Charlie foxtrot is, ask your nearest military person and they will tell you what a Charlie foxtrot is.”
Well, I got that part – though I’m old enough that the old acronym SNAFU is my standard reaction to such gov’t screw ups.
What I haven’t figured out – and don’t recall, nor can I find it in Rush’s transcripts – is what he said, just as he was signing off, the proper response to Charlie foxtrot is.
Chalk it up sheer blazing curiosity, but I hope you can answer that question for me.
TIA
From the stimulus money.
From your backpocket, my purse, and our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ bank accounts.
Man, the HopeDope is screwing this country up…
I’ve been surfing for these clunker stories for the past hour or so and all I can say is…. What. A. Disaster. I hope someone is making a Michael Moore-like documentary of this. This administration is making Jimmuh look like Einstein. I’m sure Obama will blame it on unfair criticism by Republicans. Or that it was a Republican idea.
Errah Does the dealer give you a price for your trade in along with this? You must really be trading in a beater then if its only $4500 maximum incentive. Your current vehicle must be worthless or am I missing something here?
and these are the same folks who we are to trust in predicting the economy and the climate
Wait until the IRS decides that this windfall is taxable income, and you are thrust into a higher tax bracket, or worse, become eligible for the AMT.
Don’t worry. When the gov runs out of money they’ll just print some more. Problem solved!
/sarc
The Dems and Obama have the government takes over GM and Chrysler, and then they have taxpayers subsidize grossly overpaid union members. Then the Dems and Obama have those union workers build cars no one really wants to buy. Finally, they use use more taxpayer money to bribe people into purchasing those cars.
I have a 78 Corvette, a 98 Silverado, and my wife drives an 07 Lexus. All of them paid for. I will never buy a government subsidized GMC or Chrysler, and will never buy a Ford. I hope I can milk my private enterprise Chevrolets until GM is out of government hands, or I’m too old to drive. If not, I’ll have to join my wife in buying Japanese cars.
Pure stupidity! Government-managed, pure stupidity! We should shut down Yale and Harvard right now to save future generations from such moronic ideas…
I’m being credited for something I didn’t originally say…like most I used the quote without the reference of original poster, sorry. that quote I used was:
What they are reporting does not make sense when I look at the numbers. They budgeted $1 Billion and at high $4,500 credit that means they could fund 222,000 vehicles with the program that is suppose to go through October.
House Votes to Give Cash for Clunkers Another $2 Billion
“As of late Wednesday, 22,782 cars had been purchased through CARS.”
Why the big rush on Wednesday? Well they delayed the release of the requirements so they submitted July 1-24 on that day, but the total is still just 1/10th of the money funded in about a month period. If anything they will not even spend the first $1 Billion with those numbers, because after the initial rush there will be less qualified buyers and cars as time goes on.
What goes with how the media is reporting about this story if the numbers they are using are correct? The only reason the government is doing this handout is because of how bad GM and Chrysler doing are after government takeover and these handouts are need to keep funding them and try to keep them alive.
Oh I also bet they relax the turn in requirements more in the future to get more people to try to save GM and Chrysler.
The whole damned program is sick.
http://thepatriotperspective.blogspot.com/2009/08/cash-for-clunkers.html
We used to shoot horse theives.
This will be extended indefinitely and become a permanent “entitlement.”
This will hurt the working poor most, as there will be no sub-$5000 used cars available for sale, and they will have to pay the $4500 “penalty” for not having a prior trade-in when buying a new car as new car prices adjust to reflect the taxpayer provided “credit.”
Once the market prices adjust, everyone will have to pay an additional $4500 for a new car, as well as turn over your old one for destruction.
Thanks Democrats!
I have read that some people report that the fuel economy figures have gone up overnight on their vehicle so it becomes ineligible.
It is a disgusting waste of resources (and I don’t say that often) to destroy good cars that would make a great first car form someone who need it to get to and from a job or doctor who no can not afford to get a quality used car they would be proud of.
My first car was a 92 Jeep Cherokee, it was all I could afford at the time until I saved up some more money and bought a used 02 TrailBlazer. But the is no way in hell I will willingly let the government destroy my baby. You can take my SUV form my cold dead hands.