This morning, I was watching the most trusted newsman in America as he covered what happened with “Cash For Clunkers,” and I got a bit confused. There were all kinds of reports about people being mad about how the government failed to run the program for as long as it was planned … that it was an example of how they shouldn’t be managing out healthcare or whatever.
What got me was that I don’t understand why they say it failed.
The way I understood it, there was a set amount of money set aside to incentivize trading in old, fuel inefficient cars to buy new, fuel efficient cars. They may have vastly underestimated the demand for this program or overestimated how much they should offer, but the plan was to give $4500 to people trading in to buy X amount of qualifying new cars, and that the sales goal was reached almost immediately. From what I see, the failure was that the program was too successful too fast.
Is that the point of contention? What am I missing?
