The CARS program was suspended at midnight last night due to funds being likely used up less than a week after the program went live. This afternoon, in the overwhelming brilliance of our “representatives” in Congress, HR 3435 was passed by a 316 to 109 vote in an attempt to bailout this borderline fraudulent program.
While many of us out here in the real world can see the many faults of this ill-thought out program, Congress has decided that it’s a great success and has voted to approve the transfer of additional funding in the amount of $2Bn. Now, it’s sad enough that Cash for Clunkers has burned through a BILLION dollars and wasted tens of thousands of good cars inside of a week, but where is this additional, 200% increase in funding going to come from?
Considering this program is being fed to the consumer as a way of reducing emissions and conserving energy, you might find it interesting to learn that today’s vote approved the transfer of the money from an Energy Department earmark which was to be used towards innovation in renewable energy for the country. Robbing Peter to pay Paul as always.
To make matters worse, while representatives from California are adamant about tightening the mileage requirements of the new vehicles moving forward, those from Michigan are fighting for exactly the opposite! How can a program sold to (and paid for by) the American people under the guise of reducing emissions be made to perform even more poorly? As it stands, you could have traded in your truck or SUV that gets 18mpg and received $4500 towards the purchase of another truck or SUV that gets just 5mpg more, yet the people in Michigan want to relax those requirements? Why don’t they just call this the Free Money for More SUVs Act?
It’s bad enough that this program has dealerships willfully destroying otherwise perfectly reliable cars for the mere fact that they get 18mpg (combined), but now the program has run out of money in less than a week and they’re going to do their best to take money away from responsible, renewable energy research in order to throw it on the fire that is the failing automakers. Another $2Bn should last, at this rate, less than two weeks. Then what?