The government’s “Cash for Clunkers” automobile trade-in program, widely touted by the media as a huge success, was actually one among a growing number of complete Obama administration failures.
According to automobile info company Edmunds, only about 125,000 of the 690,000 “Clunker” transactions took place because the program existed. The rest would have occurred naturally without any program. Because the program came in at a whopping $3 billion, each of the 125,000 transactions generated by the “Clunker” program cost American taxpayers $24,000.
The government could have done almost as well by just giving away cars for free, instead of creating an elaborate incentive program, according to an analysis by the automotive information firm Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, Calif.
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For comparison, the average price for a new vehicle in August 2009 was $26,915, minus an average cash rebate of $1,667.
In all, the government spent $3 billion on a program that provided cash toward 690,000 car purchases – about $4,348 per car. That makes 565,000 people who got as much as $4,500 to buy a car they would have bought anyway, according to the Edmunds analysis.
Before the libs get all wee-wee’d up about Edmunds’ estimates, they were based on and verified with actual data.
Edmunds’ used a team of statisticians, who examined sales trends for luxury vehicles and others not included in the clunker program. They used those trends to gauge where sales would have been for the industry, absent any stimulus program. These “informed estimates” were independently verified, Edmunds says, by examining transaction data.
I know, let’s let them take over our health care. Government programs always make everything so much cheaper!
The first time home buyer incentive program is doing the exact same thing right now: Paying a bunch of people to do what they were going to do anyway in order to pay a few people who wouldn’t be to do it, too. That doesn’t even take into account all the fraud. None of it matters to the genius Democrats, though. They want to extend it.
The study comes as Congress is considering whether to extend a similar stimulus program in the housing market – an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. The move appears to have gained traction this week, thanks to efforts by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada, one of the states hardest hit by the housing downturn.
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