Cash for Clunkers will continue until further notice

Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Cash for cluckers has been saved... 2 Billion more dollars injected into system...

Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

BREAKING NEWS
updated 25 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The House raced Friday to pass legislation pouring an additional $2 billion into the popular — but financially strapped — “cash for clunkers” car purchase program.
Reps. Sander Levin, D-Mich., and Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, said the House planned to consider the additional funding after lawmakers from the two states were assured by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the program would continue while the Obama administration looked for more money.


Democrats in the House were exploring the possibility of votes as early as Friday to replenish the funding. The Senate was not scheduled to vote on Friday but lawmakers hoped to win approval for additional funding next week.


Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the administration assured them “deals will be honored until otherwise noted by the White House.” But he suggested that “people ought to get in and buy their cars.”


At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs sought to assure consumers that the program is still running and will be alive “this weekend.”


“If you were planning on going to buy a car this weekend, using this program, this program continues to run,” Gibbs told reporters. He would not commit to any timeframe beyond that.
But Gibbs said administration officials and bipartisan leaders of Congress were working Friday morning “to find and develop ways to continue to fund this program.”


The administration assessed its options amid concerns the $1 billion budget for rebates for new car sales may have been depleted. The program officially began last week and has been heavily publicized by automakers and dealers.


Called the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, the program offers owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle, in exchange for scrapping their old vehicle. Congress last month approved the plan to boost auto sales and remove some inefficient cars and trucks from the roads.


The program was scheduled to last through Nov. 1 or until the money ran out, but few predicted the fund would run out so quickly. The $1 billion in funding would provide up to 250,000 new car sales.


It was unclear how many cars had been sold under the program. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said about 40,000 vehicle sales had been completed through the program but dealers estimated they were trying to complete transactions on another 200,000 vehicles, putting the amount of remaining funding in doubt.
John McEleney, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said many dealers have been confused about whether the program will be extended and for how long. Many had stopped offering the deals Thursday after word came out that the funds available for the refunds had been exhausted.“We are hoping for some clarity from the White House and Congress before the day is over,” McEleney said Friday.


The clunkers program was set up to boost U.S. auto sales and help struggling automakers through the worst sales slump in more than a quarter-century. Sales for the first half of the year were down 35 percent from the same period in 2008, and analysts are predicting only a modest recovery during the second half of the year.


So far this year, sales are running under an annual rate of 10 million light vehicles, but as recently as 2007, automakers sold more than 16 million cars and light trucks in the United States.


Earl Stewart, who owns a Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach, Fla., said the changing messages on the program has created confusion among his customers and his staff. Stewart’s accounting department also could only enter about a dozen of the 47 sales he made into the government Web site set up to handle the transactions, leaving him wondering if he will get refunded for the remaining vouchers.

With so much uncertainty surrounding the program, Stewart said he planned to continue to sell cars under the program Friday but would delay delivering the new vehicles and scrapping the trade-ins. Drivers would be put in loaners until he was absolutely certain the program was still going.

“It’s been a total panic with my customers and my sales staff. We are running in one direction and then we are running in another direction,” he said.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Great news for those still thinking, or planning, to trade a clunker. Now NTHSA just has to fix their system to make the process easier for dealers to have real time data entry, consumer purchasing, and their own real time administration of the program. Trivial suggestion, I know . . . --TK

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

If healthcare is the same way, you'd get a heart attack first before the good doctor prescribes Benadryl.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Wouldn't it have been smart if the consumers had to register their clunkers Vin#, insurance policy #, and registration on the CARS site prior to the program's launch and get pre-approved? It would have given the gov't a heads up on the number of potential buyers and saved the dealerships from trying to enter all that info and crashing the system. This could have been done all during the month of July.

Just my .02

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

You're assuming consumers have access to the internet, know the process well enough to do it themselves. Heck, even the dealer can't handle something like this and they deal with processing VIN, insurance policy daily.
The problem is with the infrastructure. Hire google, hire oracle, etc... to run cars.gov.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

:amen:

I couldn't agree more. Just shows how the government handles everything. I have an appointment to do the clunkers tomorrow. Wish me luck

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Looking at the website (http://www.cars.gov/files/day-one.pdf) for the Cash for Clunkers program, I see that they are using the EPA ratings of our 2010 Prius for educating the consumers. If you click on the link above, and go to the top of the 4th page, you will see the 50 combined rating of the Prius, although they do not name it directly.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Then you'll have the disadvantage of customers' inept, as not all will go ahead with the purchase thereby tying up the number of potential buyers. I don't know which is worse, customers' inept or government's inept.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Amen to this!

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Saying that the gov't and the CARS program admins are inept is not exactly fair. The people putting the website and the whole program together had an unreasonably short amount of time to get this done. I figure after a couple of weeks of planning they then had <maybe> two weeks to design and build the website, servers, etc. It's pretty amazing it worked at all - that stuff is not easy to do in that timeframe. Not to mention that the rules got adjusted a couple of times along the way.

I am greatly amused at all armchair pundits who gleefully say "See! See!. The government can't do anything! Just wait and see how they screw up healthcare!" Really? You are comparing the healthcare system to this? Get real. Just how broad is that brush you paint with?

Looks like the House approved $2 Billion additional funds a little while ago. So maybe I will be able to get my 2010 AND my $4500 next week as planned. Woot!

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

I would suggest that anyone that may be interested in the program jump and go ASAP at this point. Given how popular it was the first time, and the surge in demand that will likely come after all the recent publicity, I would think that the same thing could happen again.

As for the Gov't programs not running well, I would say that this one was a smash hit! I hope that they continue to fund it for one more round after this... now, if only I could find a clunker.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money....

I can't wait to see how the U.S. Legislature is going to explain to the U.S. Taxpayer how all of this free money is going to be paid back...

Keith

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

Some of it already went back to the state in sales tax, let's not even get into all the people that got to keep their jobs and staying out of unemployment.

 

Re: Cash For Clunkers is BACK!!! (9:24 AM EST per MSNBC)

As Dick Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.â€

The benefits of this program will definitely return more than the few billions provided by the gov. I have never to my knowledge taken advantage of a government aid program of any kind. However, with two cars over 10 years old and a 32% pay cut last year I have no qualms participating in CARS. Plus my clunker guzzles and pollutes 3 times more than the Prius.

As the always brilliant Cheney also said "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." I couldn't disagree more.