A plan to rid the roads of older cars to help clean the air is gaining traction in Congress, but it’s a clunker that ought to be scrapped.
President Obama’s so-called “cash for clunkers” initiative is a feel-good idea that won’t really accomplish its goals, and would only add to the soaring deficits taxpayers are growing far too weary of carrying.
A handful of bills with conflicting elements has already been introduced.
The crux of the measures would be to give owners of older cars with poor gas mileage credits as high as $5,500 to scrap their cars to buy new, better-mileage vehicles.
Some lawmakers want “Buy American” provisions attached to the credits. But others wisely note that many American autoworkers build cars for foreign companies here in this country. (If this program does pass, we urge Congress to strip any protectionist language.)
Yes, we’d like to see owners of older cars trading them in for new rides; automakers, like a lot of industries, are hurting.
But the $787 billion so-called stimulus plan already provides an incentive to buy new cars in the form of sales tax deductions. And the billions in loans extended to prop up General Motors and Chrysler led to extraordinary deals on new cars, which come with the further enticement of no-interest financing extended out as long as two years.
Simply put, the government already has provided plenty of incentives, and now that driving weather is returning and optimism is slightly improving, we suspect more buyers will come forward to take advantage.
Meanwhile, we question the logic. With tightened emissions regulations in 1994 and increasing requirements for higher-mileage cars, it would seem that the legislation ought to target really old cars. Instead, some bills allow for the credits for cars made in 2001.
And because of the much greater cost of new cars, we wonder whether owners who can’t afford anything more than their old clunker could actually take advantage of the savings.
The measure seems like an extra perk for wealthier drivers, some with perfectly good cars. It also reeks of a way for government — now firmly in the car business — to unfairly boost sales.
Congress should, ahem, hit the brakes on this one.
