By Peter Valdes-Dapena,CNNMoney
Cash for clunkers was a colossal waste of money
A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer,but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway,according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.
Still,auto sales contributed heavily to the economy’s expansion in the third quarter,adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation’s gross domestic product growth.
The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.
The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009,according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.
Can anyone feature what GOV. has done to make things appear like everything is OK. They give the money we don't have putting us further in debt only to make it look like car sales and the economy are doing good. This is a scam and a rip off of all of us. We the taxpayer are going to have to pay for all the people who got that money to buy a new car. It's crazy! Nothing is free and we are all going to pay in the end.
We have a clunker of a president,who does not have America at heart.
This phony program sold lots of Foriegn Cars. Good planning!