Patterico's Pontifications

7/31/2009

House Votes $2B More for Clunkers (Updated)

Filed under: Government,Obama — DRJ @ 4:23 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Just a day after the one-week-old Cash-for-Clunkers program was suspended, the House approved $2 billion more in funding to be paid from economic stimulus monies approved earlier this year. In order to gain the support of House Republicans, the Democrats reportedly agreed to “provisions for government auditors to make sure the money was being spent as intended.”

Everything needs to be done yesterday with this Congress and the Obama Administration. Even the better programs seem to be managed in an impulsive, haphazard and chaotic fashion. Worst of all, every solution involves spending millions, billions or trillions of taxpayers’ current (and future) dollars.

UPDATE: More on this government-created chaos.

— DRJ

24 Responses to “House Votes $2B More for Clunkers (Updated)”

  1. A couple of Billion here, a couple of billion there, who cares – its just money right? Certainly Congress and the President don’t care – it’s not their money IT’S OUR FRICKIN MONEY!!!

    We need a good torch carryin’ & pitchfork carryin’ march on D.C.

    Insanity, Insanity, Insanity

    If nothing changes, nothing changes.

    We are screwing our own children — I thought the survival instinct was to protect and preserve future generations??? We’ve got it bassackwards.

    J. Raymond Wright (e8d0ca)

  2. Amen with the whole pitchfork and torch thing.

    Vivian Louise (c0f830)

  3. Nice of our betters to decide that all our Grandchildren will be giving approximately 1/3 of 1 percent of us a great deal on new cars!

    I wonder when they’re finally going to decide to stop sticking our progeny with the bill..?

    Bob (99fc1b)

  4. Does anyone have a link to how this program is supposed to work?

    JD (e91ae1)

  5. JD,

    It’s at cars.gov but I heard a strange report today about the Terms of Use at that website. If the report is true, any concerns will probably apply only to dealers and their customers and not to internet visitors, but access it with caution anyway.

    DRJ (8d138b)

  6. Thanks for the warning, DRJ. Since my Blackberry is pretty quirky, it is best to avoid those kinds of sites.

    JD (e91ae1)

  7. If people are behaving this way over “free” money for cars, I can only imagine the run on prescriptions when the doc says…”hey, the government is paying for it, you might as well give it a try.”

    Weep.

    Em (7139fe)

  8. According to the website I can’t get free cash for my 2001 minivan because it’s too fuel efficient by a MPG or so. The tranny’s shot so it’s worth squat on a trade-in or sale with a 130,000 miles on it. I want my Obama freebies!!!!

    daleyrocks (718861)

  9. Where’s the fairness? Plus I could trade in the Fred Flintstone car they make you buy under the program, take a little haircut on it and turn around and buy a gas guzzler performance beast or SUV and still come out ahead (although the sales tax would make it pretty tight).

    daleyrocks (718861)

  10. It works. My neighbor traded in a ‘clunker’ Jeep with over 200,000 miles on it… for a new Toyota. I keep telling him the only thing made in America in any of his cars is himself.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  11. So, this program is now 3 times as big as it started, in a little over a week. This should be comforting when you consider they want to take over 1/6 of the economy.

    JD (e91ae1)

  12. I really hate this program but I’m too lazy to develop I hate cash for clunkers memes. Let’s just pretend I have really really devastatingly good ones.

    happyfeet (42470c)

  13. I would prefer to get $4500 of my tax dollars back.

    JD (8bf800)

  14. it’s dance monkey dance economics

    you know… because you’re a robot!

    happyfeet (42470c)

  15. The best things I can say about this program are that it does some mild good, the cost is only a few billion, it probably won’t destroy a large section of the economy (although autowreckers hate it), and there is no large and immortal bureaucracy created.

    In other words, it is not as bad as almost everything else Obama has done or threatened.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  16. I’ve updated the post.

    JD — You asked earlier how the program works. There’s a discussion of it at the link in the Update.

    DRJ (8d138b)

  17. Well this finishes destroying what little was left of the American free market in automobiles completely.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  18. Thank you, DRJ. That is truly confidence inspiring, isn’t it?

    JD (bc26c4)

  19. Now, in the latest taxpayer funded height of irresponsibility, we’ve bought thousands of people new cars. So, how do “clunkers” become clunkers ? Failure to properly maintain, failure to properly licence and register, and failure to drive responsibly. And all these new cars will soon become the next generation of “clunkers” at which point, the cycle starts again. Just like the temporary welfare system has expanded and become a permanant fixture for politicians to buy off irresponsible American voters. We federalized the auto industry, so now we’re federalizing the purchase of their vehicles. Way to go, America !

    DaveinPhoenix (8c6b07)

  20. Another government handout of our money. Sickening. In the old days it was the car companies that gave incentives for buying their cars. Free market. I think that there are too many people with their hand out from the top down. Buy your own darn car and if you can’t afford to buy new, buy used. Clunker or not. Just another example of America becoming sheep……….

    liss (095c02)

  21. Oh ya, one other thing, if the federal government keeps spending at the pace that they are, America will cease to exist as we know it. Don’t know how long it will take. Maybe in our childrens life time. Way to go America.

    liss (095c02)

  22. This part of the bailout demonstrates that people respond to incentives which is why Obama and the Dems should cut tax rates rather than increase government spending on pork and walking around money for Dem constituents. Of course, the unbiased MSM will never see this obvious connenction…

    Rich (c030e2)

  23. How nice, we, the taxpayers, have had to fund incompentency on the part of GM and Chrysler to rescue their failed businesses. We are again press ganged into aiding the sale of the product that has not sold otherwise. And, we do this by punishing the independent repair shops, by removing from service, customer vehicles that help provide the livelihood for thousands of small businesses across the country. The program drives warranty work and service work into the dealer networks of two incompetently run manufacturers. This despite that people prefer to have their vehicles serviced by independent repairers by 2 to 1 over dealers. So,thank you congress and mr president for, once again, fu*king the small businessman, thank you for stealing customers from me and giving them to failed businesses all the while taxing me to pay for this additional sack of “stimulating” bullsh*t. Socialist fu*ks are always in favor giving away money, so long as the money isn’t theirs, so a big fu*k you to them as well.

    Edward Lunny (331570)


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