Posted by
Laura L. Hollis, JD on Saturday, August 01, 2009 5:52:04 PM
And when human beings DO act on government incentives, the bill is how many times higher than it budgets for? The "cash for clunkers" program burned through $950 million in 4 days. So they'll throw another $2 billion at it.
And you think this won't happen with "free" health care?
Check out
this article from my local paper. Although the dealerships are happy about the surge of interest in car-buying, the
administration of the program is another matter:
Jim Turner, president of O'Brien Auto Park, said he didn't start participating in CARS until this past Monday. He
suspended O'Brien's participation Friday.
Turner said the program generated "a lot of interest," but he was
scathing in his description of how the program was administered. He
said 1,600 dealerships signed up to participate, but that the
government phone bank set up to answer questions only had 11 people.
"You couldn't even get through," he said. "It's a catastrophe."
Rick Shields [of Shields Auto Park] echoed some of those claims, saying that the dealership portion of the www.cars.gov
Web site, where dealers are supposed to submit reimbursement claims,
was slow and frequently locked up and kicked dealers off the site.
"As many vehicles as we've sold, we've yet to get one claim
through," he said. "Hopefully, they won't leave the dealers holding the
bag."
Hopefully.