Cash for Clunkers Runs out of Gas

File photo (Credit: Mike McCaffrey)

About a month ago I examined one of the latest frauds to be perpetrated on the American people: the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

Cash for Clunkers, or the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) as it is more officially known, came in below the radar of most of us, and in retrospect, that was probably shrewd of its creators.  The plan is intended to waste taxpayer money in bribing owners of cars that are not the most fuel efficient to trade in those cars for more fuel efficient ones.  You can grab a wad of the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars to the tune of $3,500-$4,500 if you’re willing to go along with this silly idea.

This is little more than another manifestation of global warming hysteria, an attempt to get more of those evil planet-wrecking SUVs off the road to soothe the consciences of tree huggers.  Otherwise perfectly good vehicles will be traded in for slightly less fuel efficient ones, and then scrapped.  These vehicles won’t be resold; a perfectly good vehicle will be totally scrapped.

Don’t the people taking advantage of this giveaway realize they are just blowing their own money?  That they are the taxpayers who are paying for this bad idea? Perhaps they don’t even bother to think before sticking out their hand.  Perhaps they hope that the evil rich will be fleeced at a much greater rate than they are (which is true) so their financial investment in this scheme will be minimal.  Everything’s fine so long as someone else gets stuck worse than me.

The only problem (other than a massive waste of taxpayer dollars on a phantom problem that doesn’t even exist) is that the $1 billion allocated to be thrown away on this program wasn’t enough.  After just a week, so many people have come forward looking for “free” cash, the program has run out of money.

This is actually a good illustration of why the socialist’s idea of cost-effective and efficient goverment health care will never work.

As I have said many times before, any time you offer something for “free,” people who otherwise would not avail themselves of the goods or services will come out of the woodwork to grab a handout.  Having lived under the military health care system for 10 years and the British government health care system for three years, I have seen this behavior time after time after time.

The socialist bureaucrats in Washington, in their infinite wisdom, estimated that a billion dollars would be enough to finance their fraudulent program.  It ran dry in a week.

These same socialist bureaucrats estimate they can socialize our health care system for a paltry $1 trillion dollars.  Now do you see why CBO estimates of $4 trillion are probably closer to the truth…if not even more than that?

The backers of the Cash for Clunkers program will no doubt be back before congress with their hands out, begging for more taxpayer funding.  Now that the word is out about this program based on a fraud, perhaps the people can speak up and demand that congress not waste more of our money on this joke…provided there aren’t too many Americans willing to be on the take.

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