If you haven’t gotten into your nearby car dealer to trade in your clunker for a more fuel-efficient car under the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program, you’re running out of time. The program will end Monday, Aug. 24, at 8 pm EDT, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday.
An excerpt from a press release on the Transportation Department’s www.cars.govweb site:
“This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work,” Secretary LaHood said. “At the same time, we’ve been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel efficient vehicles.”
As of today, the CARS program has recorded more than 457,000 dealer transactions worth $1.9 billion in rebates.
The Car Allowance Rebate System, as it is officially known, has sparked intense interest, filling auto showrooms with buyers and revitalizing manufacturing plants. As a result of the program, automotive inventory has been depleted and both General Motors and Ford are ramping up production, adding shifts and rehiring laid off workers.
“It’s been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America,” Secretary LaHood said.
Not everyone expresses LaHood’s positive excitement about the program.
Russ Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University, for one, thinks it was a great mistake. He issued some comments through a university press person:
If it’s such a great success, why are they ending it? The reason is that it was a bad idea from the beginning.
Actually, the administration would say it ended the program because it burned through the $3 billion budget Congress had voted for it.
More Roberts:
This program was just a repeat of the stupidity of the policies during the Great Depression. People were starving and they slaughtered pigs to keep the price of pork high.
When you destroy perfectly productive things — cars or pigs — you’re making the same stupid mistake of helping one group at the expense of another.