Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Clunker for Those Wanting Cash



The Obama administration, with great fanfare and the acclaim of carmakers and environmental activists, announced earlier this year the wonderful 'Cash for Clunkers' program. Trade in your old car and get up to $4500 in credit towards a new car. A win-win right?

Today the Department of Transportation has suspended the program for fear of running out of money.

It has only been in operation since July 1. The online application that dealers use to get reimbursed for their $4500 for each customer they handed the deal to came online just last Friday. And hardly any dealer has actually received the reimbursement.

So the dealers are giving out the discounts of $4500, like they were requested to do, then they go to the website to be reimbursed by the federal government, like they were requested to do, and they don't get any money due to the backlog. Now the federal government is shutting down the program. Will they ever be reimbursed for the $4500 they have handed out?

Wow. A simple program like this should be fairly simple to administer. But they can't get it right. It hasn't even been in operation a month before the feds figured out they would go bankrupt from it.

And we want to hand them the keys to universal healthcare by August?

No way. I smell a lemon.

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