Remember "Cash for Clunkers?" It was a failure on four different levels. Here's the "rest of the story."

Our headline mentions "four levels" of failure as relates to Cash for Clunkers. What are they and how do they portend failure?

First, there is the matter of failed purpose.

The whole point of the Cash for Clunkers was to bring the auto industry back into good economic times. It is a matter of record that this did not happen. . . . no recovery for the auto industry. We are told that 700,000 cars were traded in for new cars. Sounds great but, 580,000 of those trades would have been made during following 12 months. From the NY Times, we have this account of the months immediately following the "Cash for Clunkers" program:

“Floor traffic was lousy all month,” Mark LaNeve, G.M.’s vice president of United States sales, said in a conference call with reporters and analysts. “Every brand, every region of the country — it was a real post-clunker hangover. It was disappointing. I expected the month to be a bit stronger, but it just wasn’t.”

Secondly, the program was to have lasted three months.

In fact, the above Times reference speaks of the program as being a "two month" program. The fact was --- it lasted only two weeks. The original set-aside was for $1` billion. The program ran out of money on the third day, so Congress approved another 2 billion dollars, which , of course, only took the program into its second week. Understand, then, that the program cost 3 times its original estimate and did not accomplish its primary goal, stimulating the economy.

Keep saying [out loud] "three times, three times, three times, three times" as you consider what the Dems are saying about the cost of ObamaCare. Three times the auto fix was 3 billion dollars. Three times the Health Care fix will be 4.5 trillion dollars.

"But !! " you say, " it did get 700,000 clunkers off the road."

Thirdly, two things about that:

as we noted, 580,000 would have been traded in within the following 12 months anyway -- AT NO COST TO THE TAXPAYER. !! In other words [second "thing about that"], Obama forced us to spend approximately $2.2 billion for nothing.

Finally, we have this from Linette in Tulare, California:

Think of it this way:
A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of
gas a year.
A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a
year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline
consumption by 320 gallons per year

they claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.
That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about
$350 million dollars

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350
million. We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.
I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.

No matter how you slice it, this program was a monumental failure, proving, of course, that the Feds really can't do anything right when it comes to stimulating the economy or saving the world from natural disaster - text by jds.

.

.