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chico’s journal

just say NO!

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How to make the clunker debacle (@chico #49418) worse: throw good money after bad.

(Well, "good" depends on your opinion of government stimulus spending.)

From the Wall Street Journal Online:


House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) told Democratic lawmakers that a bill to transfer $2 billion in emergency funding from the economic stimulus plan to the program will be voted on Friday, according to a senior Democratic House aide.

The legislation would shift $2 billion from the $787 billion stimulus plan to the clunkers program, which appears to have exhausted its $1 billion in funding after just one week.

While the House, which is set to begin its August recess, will vote on the bill, the Senate is unlikely to do so until next week, according to Sens. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) and Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.). The Senate is in session next week.



No!!!
151 words

💬 11 comments

  1. tinypliny ·

    What the hell are they thinking? Are they thinking at all??? This is beyond ridiculous to the point of being idiotic! Is the government made of selfish idiots now? Exit war mongering, Enter idiocy. :/

  2. tinypliny ·

    I say TAKE the $1bn back!

  3. jason ·

    I read something today that made me nearly fall out of my chair, Chico. A conservative saying, hey, Liberals enjoy redistributing, why not give away these clunkers to poor people? Of course, there are holes in the idea such as, well how are these poor people who can't afford cars going to afford gas or insurance? New brakes down the road? Who will pay?

    Anyway I thought that was interesting. I would be alright with poor people getting a car as long as they were responsible for it completely on their own after they get it. If the watermelons want to retrofit a guzzler, all the better.

  4. tinypliny ·

    That plan makes even LESS sense. Isn't the whole point of this (ill-conceived) idea to take those gas guzzlers OFF the roads because they are
    a) gas guzzlers
    b) polluting

    Why on earth would you give them to be driven on roads again - so that the oil companies can continue making money out of them from "poor people" instead of the original owners? Nice thinking. :/

  5. tinypliny ·

    Seriously, is this the best both parties could come up with?? This is even worse than bigoted little Indian politicians and their puny evil agendas. Seems like all of them are desperately lacking any brains whatsoever.

  6. tinypliny ·

    Okay, hopefully this will be my last comment on this. If this $2bn also makes its way into the clunker program somehow (and you never know the fathoms of stupidity politicians are capable of), won't it run out in 2 more weeks?

    Then what? Borrow a trillion more from China to buy back all the nasty unresearched greedy little vehicles of doom using debt money??

  7. jason ·

    "Isn't the whole point of this (ill-conceived) idea to take those gas guzzlers OFF the roads because they are
    a) gas guzzlers
    b) polluting"

    Yes. Dr. Niman's article, and Chico's posts, express disappointment that the plan does nothing for the poor. It is unrealistic to expect that every move the government makes can benefit the poor, but here they make a good point concerning taking an opportunity to do something for the poor when it is in front of us.

    I wouldn't go along with an idea to give them $4500 for a car they can't afford, so if we can clean up the guzzlers somewhat and allow poor people to use them, they can more easily get a job farther away from home, travel to and from college, and more easily manage day care. If the cars work, and they can be retrofitted to be cleaner, it makes perfect sense. People need cars here to get things done for better or worse. I'm open to an alternate idea that isn't "help them buy a Prius" or "give them a bus token".

    "Why on earth would you give them to be driven on roads again"

    Because I don't live in a world where everyone crams into trains to get to where they're going, and neither do you, Tiny. Cars are here, and will continue to be here for some time. I don't have an ideological chip on my shoulder that makes me bristle at the thought of someone driving. I don't care if cars use gas or oil companies make money. We can use these vehicles to help people take better opportunities for themselves. Screw the watermelons.

  8. tinypliny ·

    Jason, I still don't get this plan at all (or its alternative) so help me understand. This is a plan for the good of the environment, no? Is it not the plan to give incentives to people so they will stop using these oil guzzling cars and buy newer more efficient ones that will use less oil, pollute less and thus, conserve some resources?

    If these old inefficient and resource-wasting cars could be "retro-fitted" to tolerable efficiency - why not give out the money for "retro-fitting"? If they want to do something about the transport of the poor:
    a) Why not buy new efficient cars for the poor directly and give it to them? Why cycle through a chain of financing the clunker-return and then spending some more to "retro-fit" them and then give them out?

    b) Why not invest this $1 billion in public transport, that is definitely more affordable? Is $1bn so less nowadays that it won't even expand the existing public transport networks?

    I don't have an ideological chip on my shoulder. I am just trying to figure out what this new government policies are and explain them to myself and puzzled folks at home. I see the point you are making about the inescapable place of cars and the oil industry in this country.

    I am not really that näive or falsely optimistic enough to believe that the stimulus fairy will set everything right overnight. But I do wonder about this magic government in power and about its promised change in policies. I am sure you know how much the world's economies depend on the US domestic economy and the oil markets. One false move here drives up costs enormously back home. You are not alone on this planet, you know? :)

  9. jbeatty ·

    After looking at some numbers this program is such a crummy disguise. This bill is not meant to help out the environment, the middle class, or the poor. One billion dollars is hardly enough to make a dent into removing vehicles that are "clunkers". One billion dollars is only enough money at the very best best to remove 286,000 clunkers. According to the US bureau of transportation statistics there are roughly 101,000,000 Trucks and SUVs in this country. These are obviously the largest contributors of pollution for personal vehicles. So my question is how is removing a quarter of a percent of gas guzzlers going to do anything to reduce pollution??? It isn't, its meant to bail out car manufacturers, yet again.

    I like Jason agree I don't live in a world where public transportation is used daily. This is mostly because it is a hell of a lot more convenient for me not use it. However I do think that now is the time that our government should start shifting our resources to expand it. Because the price of gas is never going down. At what price will it become a necessity for me to use it? I have no idea, but I'm certain I will see the day.

  10. jenks ·

    don't blame me, I voted for Nader. ;)

  11. jason ·

    I'd like to see more money invested in public transportation too. I'd like it to also not be a money sink, but I guess that is a different issue. $1B for public transportation is not a lot of money. For the kind of investment advocates are talking about, many times more will be needed. I tend to agree more that I think about it that the government plan is meant to benefit manufacturers.

    Tiny, the point IS to have less pollution, but the people who say it doesn't reduce pollution very much have a good point. I was simply offering something to people who want the plan to benefit the poor. Again, this means that the cars would have to be retrofitted. They would be using less resources, pollute less. Their previous owners who can afford a Prius will be happily puttering along. If it is impossible or too expensive to do this then scrap them, I don't care. In this instance the scales are so small, you're not hurting anybody, least of all Exxon.

    You know, seeing as how narrow a scope it has to be, and how nobody is happy with this, and because the dollar amount is not good enough for any kind of investment, it's obvious the plan is shit and we shouldn't be putting any more money into it.

    This government in power is anything but magic. I'm not on here constantly casting unfair vulgarity on the people in power. They just can't be trusted when it comes to numbers. When the politicians have to invent a statistical category nobody keeps track of to describe what the porkulus is going to do to jobs, and when they say that their health care plan is going to save money and it is found out that it is actually not going to save money, you know, it is just hard to put your faith in what they say to you. I worry more about people willfully living in denial than the politicians, at least you can boot the politicians.

    We are all in the same boat, I do know that. For better or worse, politicians do what keeps them elected back home.

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