Marathon Pundit: Cash for clunkers misfires in Nebraska

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Cash for clunkers misfires in Nebraska

Here's what an impassioned woman told Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a town hall meeting earlier this month:

I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Medicare is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can't even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, no.

While held in some circles as a success, the cash for clunkers program is appearing to be more a clunker itself as time passes.

Last night I posted about CFC problems in Illinois, this afternoon I found that some of the same issues plague cash for clunkers in Pennsylvania and Montana.

Let's see what the Omaha World-Herald has found in Nebraska:

For all the program's acclaim, the $3 billion economic stimulus effort is causing headaches locally for car dealers as well as buyers, who can get up to $4,500 off their purchase by handing over older, less-fuel-efficient vehicles.

The federal government has been slow to process the tens of thousands of clunker applications nationally, and that's creating a series of hang-ups.

Like Faulk, many other buyers have yet to receive their new cars, as dealers hold out to receive clunker funding — even though withholding a car is in violation of a federal government directive.

Other buyers are getting their cars, but dealers are presenting them with agreements to pay back the dealership if clunker funding is rejected. That, too, is wrong, the federal government says.