Let’s hope the car dealers waiting to get paid didn’t destroy the old cars yet:
‘Cash for Clunkers’ to End on Monday
Through Thursday, auto dealers have made deals worth $1.9 billion and are on pace to exhaust the program’s $3 billion in early September. The incentives have generated more than 457,000 vehicle sales. Administration officials said they have reviewed nearly 40 percent of the transactions and have already paid out $145 million to dealers.
Administration officials said applications for rebates will not be accepted after 8 p.m. EDT Monday and dealers should not make additional sales without receiving all the necessary paperwork from their customers. Dealers will be able to resubmit rejected applications after the deadline.
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Dealers have complained of delays in getting reimbursed and backlogs of vehicle paperwork getting processed in the program.
Hmmm… running out of money, delays, backlogs… and they want to give us “free healthcare,” too?
Well, the government seems have done their best, just as the Inside Line says: As a sales motivator, Cash for Clunkers has certainly been good for stimulating car sales. But the government can only do so much to help.
Although the program would end before we expected, and only run for a couple of weeks, it do contribute to the car industry, General Motors is enjoying a recent sales uptick and Chrysler had announced it would increase its production.
La vie imite l’art?
Thoroughly recognizing that it is not so, it still seems that “Cash for Clunkers” is really some long-delayed and just-discovered brilliant Alec Guiness comedy, or something from the cutting room floor of “The Flim-Flam Man.”
Imagine the story. The U.S. Government decides to pay Americans for turning in old cars, provided they meet certain paperwork requirements and certain requirements as to gas mileage. Provided also that once the cars are turned in, they must be destroyed or disabled. People storm the auto dealerships; dealers put on extra staff to sell new cars hand over fist. Idled factories spring into motion. Only, the government doesn’t pay the dealers; many of the new-car owners soon enough can’t pay for the new cars. Chaos ensues . . .
Santayana said that history plays itself first as tragedy, then as farce.
He didn’t mention, as an outrage, which is what this plan and the other plans of the Administration are.
Even though at certain moments an effort of will is required to believe that such nonsense as this is actually being debated and enacted by Congress, it must be believed because it’s real. It must be opposed and it must be stopped.