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Cash for Clunkers was intended as diversion from Healthcare debate
War funding bill On the Congressional record of the bill, piggy-backed on the war-funding bill. Passed the House June 18th after heated negotiations with Democrats opposed to the war funds (lots of feely-good funding tacked on as well). Cash for clunkers Passed by Senate June 18th, signed into law on June 25th. I think this may be among the top 5 for speed of passage after a hand-off from Congress. Quick presidential signing Bama signs the War Funding bill into law June 26 (did he read it?). So much for 5-days-public-viewing. Timing slipped The program was supposed to be enacted almost a month earlier than the July 22 launch. It appears to me that, while the Chicagoan politicians in DC try to exert control over everything that comes out of the White House, this time they were unable to control the time line and their little diversion came out too late. I believe they intended to divert the public with media attention on a very lucrative program and INTENDED it to be underfunded. Come on -- how could anyone not estimate that there might be 200,000 willing to take advantage of what amounted to (in a lot of cases) a greater-than 100% gain on the value of their trade-in? Funding it with anything less than $1 billion would have been too obvious. The conflicting media accounts of an unfunded debacle to the Democrats trumpeting success make this a classic obfuscation. But obfuscation to what? Move this past week over the week of the most intense health care debate and it all makes sense. Postulate the adjusted time line -- adjust all the hype coming from both the media and the Dems to the week during which the most heated debates were occurring about health care. Back to reality: The delay deflated their balloon. A week after launching CARS, all hype about the program is lost and all the attention in the previous weeks went unwanted on health care. They intended to have a vote on both versions of the health care reform prior to the August recess, which was scheduled for August 3rd (?), meaning the vote most certainly would have occurred the Friday previous (given their history of that practice), or at the latest July 31st. The cash-for-clunkers program was intended to go into full-swing by July 1st, not July 22nd (as it transpired). Ostensibly, the NHTSA is the party responsible for the delay. Complex Washington politics, too many players, too little time. Bama's Chicago thugs learned a valuable lesson about DC bureaucracy and got a lot of unwanted attention on the health care debate, leading to MUCH public attention and outrage and, consequently, a delay in the vote. And, as I've asserted, the Republicans missed a huge opportunity to trash the economic policies of this administration by using the success of nearly putting $$ back into the pockets of working Americans. Imagine had actual tax cuts been afforded to all of us. This could have been a huge publicity coup for conservative opposition. But in the end bureaucracy reigned and gave the health care debate some much-needed attention. I, for one, never thought I would ever thank god for government bureaucracy. My .02. Posted by: logi_cal 2009-08-07 |
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