In honor of this program I'm putting a rebuilt rack and pinion on my '82 Toy and driving it for another 170,000 miles. Eat my smoke Obama!
rainbowed
Great Falls, MT
Tribune
Yup. Waste breeds in the party if they can profit from it. It's like a Petrie dish for bottom feeders.
deminn
St. Cloud, MN
Timese
Good blog Ed, but you are wrong on the job creation statement. LaHood is tripling his staff to 1100 employees to handle the paper work. LaHood stated that one of the problems for the delay in sending dealers their checks was mistakes in paperwork. It takes approximately 50 minutes to complete the paperwork required by this program. Gee, what's the chance of a mistake?
fuguestate
Montgomery, AL
Advertiser
[IF these 1100 bureaucratic jobs are new hires, two additional negative results of C4C will be added to the growing list:
1. The program will end up costing the taxpayers even more than expected.
2. Government will have grown as the private sector keeps shrinking.
Just guessing, but I believe these bureaucrats are being temporarily re-assigned. Of course, Joe the Schmoe will be telling us that their jobs were "rescued". -ED]
Good read. All this "free" money at some point is going to come back and bite us in the form of tax hikes I'm sure. It has to come from somewhere and last time I checked our national debt is still growing. Throwing money at problems instead of fixing them may create a short term relief but isn't going to have many long term benefits in the end.
TravisSimpson
Des Moines, IA
Register
...I have a friend who pointed out a few things that put this all in perspective. They government created, funded and then quit funding a program that helped the citizens of this country directly to the tune of $3 billion dollars. While not chump change, this is really a drop on the bucket of what has been spent towards recovery. I know Wells Fargo got about $25 Billion. AIG and other financial institutions got over $100 Billion EACH.
I guess we know who the politicians favor with our tax payer dollars.
Don't get me wrong though, I still think the Cash for Clunkers program was a joke. Yeah they may have sold something like 750k cars, but the cars that were eligible to be turned in were pretty select. This really was nothing but a feel good attempt by the politicians to make them feel like they did something to help the common man. I wonder what the interest rates were on the new car loans that were made? The days of 0% financing are long gone.
sirquack
Des Moines, IA
Register
[FYI, Government Motors is offering 0.0% APR through GMAC to qualified buyers in lieu of rebate. -ED]
Botched indeed. Yet some folks believe that allowing government to take control over our healthcare is a good idea. As badly as they have farked up this situation with cars, I sure as heck wouldn't trust them with my health or life. And what happens to the people whose cars have already been crushed, but the dealership is refusing to give them their new car until the government coughs up some cash? I'm so glad that I didn't rush out to buy a new car even though I would qualify for this program!
MindBoggled
Des Moines, IA
Register
[FYI, the only ones left holding bag at this point are the dealers. -ED]
So now we who can't afford new cars don't have old ones to buy. Good move!
mrskfc
Wilmington DE,
News Journal
So what will happen say in three months and the new owners can not make the payments for the new car? Don't understand how this is going to help with job creations other than maybe need more repo men!
Anonymous
Waste of taxpayers money. I heard on CNN today that a dealer was done selling cars as of yesterday as they had not received one dime from the gov. They are holding the bag for 155 thousand dollars, and refuse to do any more business. Can you see a lawsuit in this situation. They are to sell cars until Monday, by Obama's plan.
justpoor
Des Moines, IA
Register
Like a night of bar-hopping, a feelgood exercise turns into a long headache. How many of these programs are going to be hyped and fail before the clunkers in the White House and Congress are sent packing?
deserttrek
[Hijack the House in 2010 and the nightmare shifts back to the lefties where it belongs. -ED]
Isn’t this “cash for clunkers” money considered as income? It certainly isn’t a gift.
Come tax time this money will have to be added in and appropriate taxes on the overall balance must be paid. I have yet to see this side of the “cash for clunkers” discussion brought up.
Mrduncan2k
Salinas, CA
[Good question. In every state I know of, you would pay full sales tax on the selling price of the new vehicle. Your rebate (s) -- C4C and/or manufacturers incentives -- then come off the bottom line along with any down-payment by the buyer. It only gets reported to IRS if you bring $10k or more to the dealership as down-payment on a loan or COD. -ED]
My prediction is there will be another layer to this fiasco. Oh how soon the gov't forgets. Aren’t we still trying to work out of the home owner’s catastrophe? From what I see, the govt just handed the people of America another situation to deal with except this time it will be in the Auto Market. All these people who thought they were getting a great deal by receiving $4,500, or so, off their “clunkers” bought cars they may think they can afford. My guess is a good portion of them will get about 4 months into their payments and realize the sacrifices necessary in their daily lives to make these payments. After about 9-12 months they will figure it isn’t worth it, try and trade the car in or repossessions will begin from lack of payments. Sure, there are those who took advantage of a good deal for those specific people and will be fine on their payments but a backswing is coming and it will hit the industry, the people, and this administration right in the back of the head.
HarleyRoad
Green Bay, WI
PressGazette
GM, Hyundai and other car makers are rehiring thousands of laid off American workers. So are parts suppliers. Car dealer's phones are ringing of the hook. Sorry Eddo, this is another "big government" program that has been a resounding success. The hope of everyone involved is that it will be extended again.
donsadam
Tallahassee, FL
Democrat
[And you work at which dealership? And you or your boss are out-of-pocket for how much for how long? And you heard this glorified news from what source? Big government (correct answer for a change) can't even predict where a $3B program will end up so how can it be trusted with the trillions it has already appropriated and the trillions of $ we no longer have but it is going to spend irregardless? -ED]
They claim 1500 new (and soon to disappear) jobs added under this program. So given the program cost about 4 billion, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million per job? Just a guess may, be off a bit, but any way you slice it that's pretty expensive for less than permanent employment, especially when most of it is in Smyrna, Tenn., and not Detroit or Flint or Lansing.
So when is Michael Moore gonna make a docu-flick on this travesty? Lost his nerve maybe?
BilBala2
Lansing, MI
State Journal