Conservatives For Cash

This is the last week before the congressional August recess, meaning that there are several important policy agendas on the table that need to be reconciled. Of course President Obama had made a big deal about Health care reform and there is the under-reported story of Democratic attempts to reform Pell Grants for college tuition, but one surprising story has been the strange odyssey that is the "cash for clunkers" program. Cash for Clunkers will reimburse Americans that trade-in an older, less fuel efficient vehicle for a new one, up to forty-five hundred dollars.
The program has three main goals. The first is stimulus, getting people spending. Secondly, it directs that spending to the ailing American car companies, boosting consumer confidence and saving American jobs. Finally, it's eco-friendly. By reducing the amount of fossil fuels that we burn, it will help to lessen greenhouses gases in the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the program has worked gangbusters. Also not surprisingly, conservatives in congress want to kill it.
As of Saturday, only a week into the program, auto dealers had already submitted eighty-five thousand clunker requests, with thousands more backlogged. The average fuel efficiency improvement from the cars traded in to the cars bought was about 60%, from 16 mpg to 25 mpg. The program was so successful that the administration has requested another $2B to keep the program going.
Enter conservatives in congress. John McCain threatened a filibuster. Jim DeMint has said we need to "slow this thing down," sounding much like he does on health care. Some members have cynically suggested that we start all kinds of new programs like this one, going so far as to say we need "Cash for Cluckers," were the government would pay people to eat chicken. Some conservative Democrats, like Claire McCaskill, have also opposed the program.
Why all this venom for a program that has exceeded everyone's expectations? Ideology. Conservatives hate government, and any program that proves that government programs can be this successful must be stopped, immediately. Some have gone so far to say that if the government can't run this program, why should we trust them with our health care. Well, the government has run this program, and that's why millions of Americans want them running their health care, too.
Government should not tell you how to live your life, what car you should buy, or how your going to die, but they can put their sizable thumb on the scales of society to influence behavior. That is how the stimulus has started the resuscitation of the American auto industry, and that is how a public health care option will discipline the insurance companies into actually providing quality and affordable health care instead of lining their own pockets.