The Cash for Clunkers brouhaha (translation: utter confusion) reinforces the view that the U.S. government’s doing an awful lot of improvising lately. (And not so lately – last fall’s rescue-the-economy efforts by the whithering Bush administration were most definitely off-the-cuff.) Obama’s healthcare reform effort has unfolded in an oddly ad hoc manner. One would have expected a savvier campaign – from the consummate campaigner, after all – to win over Congressional and, er, normal hearts and minds. The president’s impetuous comment about the Gates arrest was of a piece. And now, Cash for Clunkers: Is it being suspended or isn’t it? Will it get more money or will it stall at $1 billion? Answer: The House of Representatives has dumped another $2 billion into the program today but whether the Senate will okay the funding remains unclear – and what all this means for clunker-owners is murky. Peggy Noonan had it right when she recently wrote that the president’s trying to do too much, too soon and, I might add, a bit too haphazardly. Of course, it’s not just the Prez. The Congress is also deep in improv mode – especially the Republican Party as it continues wrestling with its post-Bush identity crisis. Who and what is the GOP, exactly? All this said, some of Washington, D.C.,’s machinations over helping Americans dump their rusty heaps would be charming if the attendant politicking wasn’t so very aggravating. Here’s WSJ colleague Joe White, coining the term “Clunker Follies,” with a Clunkers primer.
2 Comments to “Clunker Follies”: Government By Improv
tom a taxpayerAugust 2, 2009
“Cash for Clunkers” is an environmental disaster. Scraping cars years before the end of their useful life is the height of profligate and wasteful consumption. The thousands of pounds of energy-intensive, highly-processed materials and advanced engineering equipment in cars is an enormous investment based on massive inputs of energy, mining, water, labor and materials. It makes no energy, environmental or economic sense to destroy the cars engines and render the investment useless years before the end of their useful life. The premise that buying a new car to get better gas mileage than a scraped car will save energy and be good for the environment is myopic and false when applied to scraped cars that would have had years of useful life. “Cash for Clunkers” is a net energy waster, and a colossal waste of resources.
“Clunkers” is a terrible misnomer. By disabling the engines and scraping perfectly good used cars, the “Cash for Clunkers” program is hurting the used cars industry and the poor and moderate income folks who can only afford used cars. The “Cash for Clunkers” is largely benefitting the haves and hurting the have-nots.
The arrogant, ignorant environmentalmidgets in Congress and the Obama administration who concocted or supported “Cash for Clunkers” are a disgrace to the environmental movement.
Like a mind, a car is a terrible thing to waste.
August 1, 2009
If the gov’t can’t even get this Clunker deal to work smoothly, how the hell can we expect them to figure out healthcare?