Cash For Clunkers So Popular It Is Broke; and So Inefficient We Do Not Know By How Much
By PrivatePigg ~ July 30th, 2009. Filed under: Economy, Obama.
But the Times only gives you the first part of the equation, not surprisingly.
After an unanticipated level of response from car shoppers seeking new auto discounts under the “cash for clunkers” program, the government was reported Thursday evening to have exhausted the funds available, leaving unclear whether further applications would be accepted…A statement issued Thursday evening by the White House said: “We are working tonight to assess the situation facing what is obviously an incredibly popular program…”
What the New York Times neglects to mention is that:
Through late Wednesday, 22,782 vehicles had been purchased through the program and nearly $96 million had been spent. But dealers raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system, prompting the suspension.A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association found about 25,000 deals had not yet been approved by NHTSA, or nearly 13 trades per store. It raised concerns that with about 23,000 dealers taking part in the program, auto dealers may already have surpassed the 250,000 vehicle sales funded by the $1 billion program.
“There’s a significant backlog of ‘cash for clunkers’ deals that make us question how much funding is still available in the program,” said Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the dealers association.
Alan Helfman, general manager of River Oaks Chrysler Jeep in Houston, said he was worried that the government wouldn’t pay for some of the clunker deals his dealership has signed because they aren’t far enough along in the process.
His dealership has done paperwork on about 20 sales under the clunker program, but in some cases the titles haven’t been obtained yet or the vehicles aren’t yet on his lot.
“There’s no doubt I’m going to get hammered on a deal or two,” Helfman said.
Is it a popular program? Sure, but that’s a no-brainer. You are giving people money to trade in 25-year-old junkers. Sounds like the conservative principle of giving tax breaks and rebates to consumers to encourage certain behaviors, like buying fuel-efficient cars or energy-efficient windows, or to encourage general spending. The government is saying, in essence, that they have all this money set aside. The money, of course, is tax money. The government says they will give this money to you if you do what they deem to be beneficial to society. In this case, it just happens to be to encourage people to get fuel-inefficient cars off the road. Wow. Brilliant. What a concept. You’ll give me back my tax dollars if I do something I wanted to do anyway, like get rid of this old POS?
What is telling, however, is how poorly the program was run by the government. They are so backlogged and so behind that they aren’t even sure if they have more applicants than funds available. Rather than encourage the dumping of fuel-inefficient cars at no expense, we are now going to leave certain dealerships with losses simply because the bureaucratic nightmare that is the government could not keep up with the demand they so purposely set out to create. It’s not like they expected 100 cars and got 1000. They set aside $1 billion so that they could do $1 billion-worth of rebates. How can they not have enough resources to work within their own plan? This was not some open-ended program that far exceeded expectations, but rather an example of the ineptitude of government service to work within their own expectations.
If the government’s defense is that too many cars were returned too quickly, then they are equally at fault for being unprepared to deal with this very real prospect.
And the New York Times completely ignored the number of backlogged automobiles.
More: Breitbart, Politico, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air.
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