Cash For Clunkers Fraud

So, the $1 Billion Cash For Clunkers program for the U.S. government to pay auto dealers anywhere from $3,500 to $4,500 for a new car purchase is out of money after only one week. Assuming the average payout was $4,000, that would be 250,000 Clunker deals sold during that time.

There are so many things wrong with the Cash For Clunkers program. Where to begin?

- First, that it is being portrayed as an unqualified success based on the initial $1 billion having been given away in merely one week. How low can Democrats set the bar for themselves when the measure of success is their burn rate on taxpayer's hard-earned dollars? That might explain why they were all patting themselves on the back after passing the Omnibus Spending bill of $400 Billion and the Stimulus Package of $687 Billion mere days after they were introduced.

- Speaking of a low bar, a "Clunker" is any vehicle from 1984 forward that gets 18 mpg or less. It can be replaced with a pickup or SUV that gets - wait for it - 18 mpg or better. Passenger cars need get only 22 mpg, when the average Clunker passenger car already gets 18 mpg. This makes the average savings in gas per vehicle anywhere from 0 gallons to a maximum of 150 gallons per year. Assume the average savings is 75 gallons, and that's less than 20 million gallons saved per year in a nation that burns almost 400 million gallons every day.

Looking at it another way, the government is spending $1 Billion in incentives to prevent $50 million in gas purchases.

- Clunkers are by definition cars that aren't road worthy and expensive to drive, which means they weren't driven much prior to Cash For Clunkers. They will now be replaced by cars that are road worthy, thus likely increasing total miles driven by the American public. There will be no net reduction in miles driven, and thus, no positive effect on the environment.

- This constitutes corporate welfare for Japanese and Korean car companies. It's strange that the major beneficiaries of billions of American tax dollars should be the very countries that have closed their markets to American manufacturing.

- Democrats are rewarding the "winners" they picked in the Dealership sweepstakes two month's ago with tax dollars. The "losers", as has been widely reported, were Republican businessmen, displaced by the thousands when their franchises were taken away.

- Welfare for car buyers? Why not welfare for P.C. owners? Surely there are millions of power hogging older computers and monitors that could be replaced by more efficient newer models? How about welfare for home air conditioning? The possibilities are endless, yet unexploited. That's because it's a bad idea.

- Fraud, fraud and more fraud. Look for a landrush of Beaters to be rushed over the border from Mexico. And look for little or no accountability that the Scrap yards responsible for destroying these cars actually did so. By the way, did you know that only the engine need be destroyed? Look for a brisk business of dropping scrap engines into scrap cars, that are then pushed into new car dealerships in trade.

- This inspires yet another consumer debt binge. If all the buyers exploiting the Clunker's program could afford prior to this was a Clunker, what's the likelihood that they will honor the financing on the new car?

- And let us not forget the inevitable Hangover once the money is gone. Having accustomed the American consumer to massive subsidies for car purchases, who will buy a car once the program is gone?

Worst of all, this program is yet another frontal attack on the savings accounts of Middle America. It's no coincidence that Obama didn't implement such a plan when GM and Chrysler were in private hands, with huge stakes by holders of 401Ks and IRAs. No, Democrats only came up with this program once stockholders were robbed and The United Auto Workers and the U.S. government were the majority owners of both companies. Now, they're using your tax dollars to make the companies profitable.

Democrats are merely doing what Democrats do best: spend like drunken sailors so as to line their own pockets, steal Taxpayer money to do it, then stick taxpayers with the tab.

Some day the bill will come due, though. Although small, this program brings that day closer, and it's only costing us $1 Billion per week.