Granholm Declares "Cash for Clunkers" a Success

Never mind that the program is not officially over yet. Never mind that the government itself does not even know how many deals have been written to this point. Never mind that the government has not one iota of evidence that even a majority of the cars being sold are manufactured by stimulus receiving GM or Chrysler, or that a single car or any part in any of these cars was even manufactured in Michigan. Never mind that we do not know how many of these 250,000 vehicles being sold under the initial installment of the program are vehicles that would have sold as part of July's normal sales figures and, as a result, the American taxpayers may be needlessly dumping $4,000 average into hundreds of thousands of units that needed no sales' motivation. (J.D. Powers' automotive analyst Gary Dilts estimates approximately 210,000 of the 250,000.)

No, the only evidence that Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has that the program is successful is that the government rifled through its initial allotment of money in about 1/10th the time it had predicted it would.

Never has such a hugely errant prediction become the measurement by which such huge success has been determined. The governor believes that the program has saved and created more jobs than any other portion of Obama's stimulus package while the program is being credited by Michigan Rep. Candice Miller as having gotten us "our mojo back."

Oh, and all that money that we gave to Chrysler and GM to keep them afloat...how do you like the idea that taxpayer money in the form of some of these buyer incentives is going to pay off this debt to the taxpayers? That isn't even robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is robbing Paul to pay Paul.

One thing that is certain is that the taxpayers are $1,000,000,000.00 more in debt with that amount climbing as each old clunker exits the highway and a Toyota takes its place.

No wonder we feel so darn good.