01 Aug 2009 Outrage of the Day: Congress, Administration Hurt People, Rip Off Taxpayers to Buy People Cars

Posted at 03:43h in Articles, Blog by

I have not yet blogged about Cash for Clunkers because every time I think about it, I become so enraged I become completely incomprehensible.

Until I settle down, I recommend this excellent article, “‘Cash for Clunkers’ Breaking Down, But Not Before Hurting Lower-Income Buyers, Auto Recyclers,” by Elizabath Hovde for the Portland Oregonian.

Hovde explains how Cash for Clunkers hurts “already-hurting auto parts suppliers,” recyclers and lower-income people, and she has the facts to prove it.

John McCain reportedly is going to filibuster the renewal of Cash for Clunkers when it hits the Senate next week, and good for him. Too bad it was barely debated when it passed the first time.

I agree with those who point to the initial self-destruction of this program and say, if the federal government can’t administer a program to give away free money so people can buy themselves a nice new car, how can we possibly trust it to run our health care?

Somebody is saying that, right? Because we would be insane to trust our very lives to a government this full of boobs.

Cash for Clunkers — the coercive confiscation of the wealth of some people to help other people upgrade the quality of their consumer goods (notice we don’t even bother with means testing anymore) — is antithetical to common sense, fairness and any sense of budgetary realism. It’s so bad, it’s anti-American. Our federal government was not set up for the purpose of buying people vehicles (or anything else, for that matter).

I’m going to go now and read the list of the Members of Congress who voted today to extend this travesty. None of them, I believe, deep in the hearts, are Americans. Their passports may say they are Americans, but their hearts show something else. And anybody who takes the money under this program is a welfare queen, and should be ashamed of themselves. You are stealing from your fellow taxpayers, and the government endorsing the theft doesn’t make it right.

Addendum, 8/1/09: The U.S. public opposes the program, 54 percent to 35 percent.

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