Comments on: Cash for Clunkers Says Goodbye Tonight

By: Cash for Clunkers Gets $2B, Back on Track | Hypermiling, Fuel Economy, and EcoModding News - EcoModder.com

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:39:51 +0000

[...] we recently posted, the program ran out of its first billion after its first week in operation. So, despite all the [...]

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:46:10 +0000

That’s a wonderful picture of the Plymouth!

By: Christ

Christ — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:42:15 +0000

Agree with McTimson on the website thing. This is the 21st century, right? I thought so. Email, even?

By: McTimson

McTimson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:09:44 +0000

With $1 billion, at $4500/car, the government can give out about 220,000 rebates. There are roughly 20,000 dealerships in the US right now. That means each dealership can give out 11 rebates, if every dealer was allocated an even amount. There’s no way it could have possibly gone until November, at least not without more money to give out.

I don’t get why they needed to wait for paperwork to be filled out – it’s 2009. They can’t set up some website for dealers to log in to and record their rebates? Even if it’s not an official record, at least it would give them an idea of how fast the money is being used, instead of waiting for the dealers to mail all their stuff in.

By: Benjamin Jones

Benjamin Jones — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:46:58 +0000

As the government tells the story, it was the dealers who alerted the government they might be overspending the money, or at least spending it lots faster than usual. I don’t blame them so much because, after all, paper work takes time and they seem way to busy as it is with all the people trading in junk

By: Christ

Christ — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:43:10 +0000

AFAIC – It’s the dealer’s fault. If they’re processing paperwork and they fall outside some arbitrary time limit for doing so, but they’ve already handed out the rebate, it should be on them.

In other words, they (gubmint) should have set a limit on how long the dealer had from the time of the rebate to file the paperwork for reimbursement of it. Something like 10 days, so that when the dealer “misplaced” the paperwork, they just screwed themselves, and not the American Taxpayer.

I’m already slightly disgusted by the program as a whole, though I see a pertinence to it, as oppposed to other programs that our US Government has passed and discussed in the past and present. The fact that they can’t keep the program “running smoothly” (as opposed to most of the cars they’re targeting for it), is just more mud in the face of an obviously waning empire.