House approves $2B more for 'cash for clunkers' »
Posted By rbiii 3 months, 3 weeks ago in Political News
Alternate Title: How government programs have a nasty habit of costing more than originally budgeted.
Read Full Story at breitbart.com »
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rbiii
A father of four. A conservative who believes in Federalism and limiting the power and scope of government.
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rbiii3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Hmmm.... it started off as 1 billion, now it is going to grow to 3 billion...
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The same thing happened with TARP, the stimulus, and more than likely will happen with whatever health care package they finalize.
Anyone noticing a trend here?-
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GWHayduke3 months, 3 weeks ago
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I HAVE noticed a trend with your comments.
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Each more inane, nonsensical and rage filled than the last.
Most folks are concerned with moving forward and utilizing strategies to get the economy moving forward.
You, on the other hand, seem only interested in regressive failure. -
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deathray3 months, 3 weeks ago
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yes, and 230,000 cars were sold. there's a multiplier effect going on here. if an average car runs 20,000 usd, say, that's 4.6 billion injected into the economy, for 1 billion dollars, in the space of a week...there's unmet demand for the program, and it's keeping people at work.
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so, what's your beef? don't you know success when you see it?
"But Republicans like Pete Hoekstra of Michigan and John Campbell of California have already spoken in favor of the bill in Friday afternoon floor speeches."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25662.ht... -
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mesodude3 months, 3 weeks ago
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"The House approved a bill Friday to provide $2 billion to continue the federal government's week-old "cash for clunkers" program, which proved so popular with consumers that it was almost out of cash.
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The 316-109 vote split Republicans but attracted the support of nearly every Democrat."
"But supporters of the program emphasized that its dire financial straits indicated that it was working. "This is the best $1 billion of economic stimulus funds that the government has ever spent," said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2... -
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mesodude3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Hi, Klarissa. Girlfriend, where were your accounting books and calculator before Obama got into office? Exactly...All you have to offer are more of your brain-dead lying and neocon party-loyal hypocrisy. You're absolutely full of CRAP, Klarissa. 100% CRAP. ;-P
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Bush's Con Jobs
Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out?
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.
Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.
Bush's war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal US casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded--and Bush's war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of US troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted.
Dr. Stiglitz's $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz's.
Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war's diversion of the nation's attention away from the ongoing erosion of the US economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the US economy has been rapidly deteriorating into third world status.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa...
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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Shocking News: People Take Free Money!
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"This, after barely a week in full-tilt operation the "Cash for Clunkers" program has been suspended. But the suspension of the program has brought even more economic absurdity.
Rep. Candice Miller breathlessly tells us "The thing has exploded. It has exceeded everyone's expectations." Before we go on let's just pause and reflect on these people who were surprised. Here is the amazing turn of events:
1. The government starts handing out free money.
2. People start grabbing it as fast as they can.
3. The bureaucrats quickly realize that they are hitting the program's budget in mere days (of the program being finalized) and suspend the program.
What is the reaction to this perfectly foreseeable sequence of events? "...dealers were amazed...", "the explosively popular... program."
As if the program itself and the surprise at its reception weren't enough, there is one more bit of economic foolishness dolloped on like a cherry on top. Returning to the brilliant Rep. Miller (representative from Michigan and co-architect of the glorious program) she is enthused at the results: "'Throughout our history, it has been auto sales that have pulled us out of recession. People are more likely to buy cars than houses. Not to be too Pollyannaish, but we're gettin' our mojo back. This could be the pivot' that begins an economic recovery."
How do you get an economic recovery going? Start raining free money down on everyone's heads. I grew up thinking that the people from the Middle Ages were idiots... They believed the earth was flat! Turns out they didn't actually. But Rep. Miller (and how many Americans?) really does believe this nonsense. I have found the Dark Ages and it is us."
see: http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/07/31/shocking... -
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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"This clunkers program is a Great Depression scheme designed by economic numbskulls. In the Great Depression crops were plowed under and livestock were killed to keep prices high! Pretty stupid right!"
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"In this Greater Depression automobiles are taken from the market and the engines are destroyed in exchange for cash. Hopefully then this funny money is used to buy cars from government-owned car companies that sell inferior cars but have in place government-conceived incentive programs to buy these poor quality vehicles."
--Bruce Koerber, Economic Numbskulls, July 30, 2009 8:50 PM
http://blog.mises.org/archives/010377.asp-
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mesodude3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Cons? Why do you think anyone takes you filthy weasels seriously when you didn't give a CRAP how Bush spent money? Think about it. Why would should anyone care what you people think? Why are you even still TRYING to perpetuate this fantasy that you're anything but partisan con wh*res for tax cuts? Exactly...We know what cons are to the core, baby. ;-P
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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screw it. they're giving away your grandchildren's money. might as well snag it. $4500 for your old 1985 POS to keep prices artificially high. i wonder if you can use it to buy a slightly used $4500 car. woo, hoo. free cars. way to stimulate the socialist imagination.
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tanglang3 months, 3 weeks ago
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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ah, this is too good. beck is sounding the alarm that if you click accept to a disclaimer on the cars for clunkers website that you agree that government owns your computer and everything on it.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOBlqUqUZ8
sounds like the website was hacked if you ask me. but in today's 1984 reality, you never know. =) -
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beavith13 months, 3 weeks ago
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and the even simpler math. this $1B was supposed to last until November.
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they burned it in a week.
OK kids. lets do a math word problem.
if you can perform a gov't handout in the last week of July with $1B, when will the new handout end if you give 'the people' another $2B more?
hint: it won't be November.
sheesh.-
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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lesson learned: people like free money. just don't tell them where it came from =)
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"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money" --P. J. O'Rourke
How fitting
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tadair9193 months, 3 weeks ago
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remember that scene in "Who Killed the Electric Car?" when Huell Howser is outside of the Electric Car impound watching all the electric cars get smashed? He says, "it's an awful shame," that all these cars are just going to waste.
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Today, the liberal says its not only a boon to the economy, but a boon to the environment. Oh, the irony.
Read: The Fallacy of the Broken Window here: http://aynrkey.blogspot.com/2009/07/fallacy-of-bro...
Keynesians say that a broken window is actually a boon to the economy because this spurs window sales and glaze manufacturers. The above link spells out the fallacy in a matter that you feel stupid for even suggestion something like this could work. =) -
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simonsez3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Some of these will default and have no car. Then what?
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Isn't this kind of like sub-prime mortgages enticing people to maybe do stupid things?
Also ... a shortage of older cars for poorer people and higher prices for used vehicles.
All in the name of Al's GW hysteria. Aren't we smart! -
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Klarissa3 months, 3 weeks ago
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[note: the German plan was NOT based on miles per gallon]
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www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,62336...
The German Plan:[selected quotes from the article]
It pays $3,320 to people who scrap a car that's at least nine years old and buy a new car instead.
It pays $3,320 to people who scrap a car that's at least nine years old and buy a new car instead.
Harmful for Other Merchants
But the rebate also has some major downsides. Retailers, for example, have complained bitterly that the program sucks spending from other categories.
German retail sales fell 1.5 percent in March -- the third monthly decline in a row -- a decline that retail industry groups blame partly on incentives to buy cars rather than other goods.
On the negative side of the balance sheet, the program will kill jobs in other parts of the economy, for example auto repair shops or used-car dealers. A study by the Halle Economic Institute, a major think tank, estimates that the net burden on the German government budget will be $3.5 billion.
However, another problem is that much of the money -- 75 percent, according to the Halle study -- will go to people who would have bought cars anyway. And a large chunk of German taxpayer dollars will flow to manufacturers outside the country. While Ford makes the Fiesta in Cologne, the Ka comes from a factory in Poland. Fiat, Renault, and other non-German carmakers are among the main beneficiaries of the rebate.
Whether Germany's wreck rebate is a success depends on how long the auto industry downturn lasts. If it continues, the rebate may merely delay the pain and set the stage for a steeper downturn later in the year." -
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simonsez3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Today dealers are being told to "go slow" and "be cautious" about the program. Dealers are scrambling to get the cars destroyed so they can claim their rebates and it may take a few weeks to get that done, maybe longer.
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This is going to turn into the typical government disaster in a few months and a lot of people will be hurt by it.
We never learn, do we ... and you want the government to take care of our health needs. God help us.
This so-called successful program ends up costing Dems votes in 2010. That's the only plus I see ... -
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JimP33 months, 3 weeks ago
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There will be no used cars left under $4,500. If someone wants to buy a new car and they have nothing to trade in, they can go buy a used car for less than $4,500 and trade it in for the rebate and net the difference as a discount. Is there something wrong with this picture?
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