BAnkrupting success of free healthcare will be called what?

I'm sure it's running out of money much 'sooner than expected'...

The Bad News:  The Obama White House and its lapdogs in the Congress grossly underestimated the costs of buying up used cars.  But the President assures us that any health care reform bill he signs must pay for itself:  No new taxes.

Whatever passes for "self-sustaining" health care reform this year won't even last as long as the Cash for Clunkers program did.

The Good News:  If the funding is ever restored to the Cash for Clunkers program, and you've lost your health insurance coverage because the insurer cannot compete with "the public option," you can get money for that urgent surgery by certifying that you get less than 15 miles per gallon, quicker than queuing up for care under the public option.

I'm shocked: government FREE MONEY is POPULAR.

My God NO-ONE could have forseen that!

What next: Congress amazed to discover sick people use healthcare!

Thanks Barack: from post-racial to most-racial in just six months!

What becomes of all these bombs people are trading in? If it's an operational vehicle (as is req'd), is it better to have them end up in landfills or rotting away in junkyards to save a few gallons of gas? They're not all going to be recycled anytime soon.

And I didn't see anything in the regs about emissions, so it seems to me like this is trading one form pollution for another.

Wonder if they give away free AK 47s with some of those sales?

One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).

Once again, the Dems manage to screw over their base. For decades, they've been pushing people to buy more and more fuel-efficient cars. Then, they develop a cash-for-clunkers program that specifically prohibits anyone with an older fuel-efficient car from participating. So, the middle and lower class folks, the core of the Democrat voter block, get nothing for having followed their "leaders" all these years.

And who's winning out? The people who said screw the emissions numbers, I'm going to buy a big old truck or SUV if I want to, i.e., more affluent people. The other winners - companies with fleets of older trucks who are capitalizing on a chance to cut fuel and maintenance costs, and replace aging vehicles, with new ones while the government pays part of the bill and they get to maximize their profits.

So, once again, the brilliance of the Dem leadership takes money away from the poor, downtrodden, fools who follow them, and makes the rich even richer.

- I'd gladly fork over a few grand to get rid of both my senators and most of my reps. Oh, and throw in my governor, too, to sweeten the deal.

So in the fine print, it seems they have most of the original billion left.  None of has been mailed. 

"due to exceedding high popularity we are extending this"

How long does it take to check voting records?

As a longtime car guy, I have a problem with destroying all those engines and forcing them to be melted down. The engine is not the culprit here, an engine out of an SUV or pickup truck that qualifies could very well fit a compact or midsize car that would get well over 20 mpg. Those same engine models might be still in production in new cars. All the work put into manufacturing that engine goes down the drain for not very good reasons.

David Gregory:  "This was a program that was made to bolster sales for the auto companies which are hurting desperately."

This was a program designed to get people to dump older, larger vehicles for "eco-friendly" greenmobiles.  Half baked environmentalist theories drive (pardon the pun) a lot of policies in this administration. 

When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.

Alot of posts in here talking about whether it should have been just American-based auto makers, the cost, etc.

For me (and for most here too, but admittedly we all get caught up in the cost, method, etc), all that is a sideshow and is where the liberals want the argument to be, if there is an argument.  The real argument is simply, it's NOT the federal government's business to be giving people money to buy cars.  What freakin planet am I on!?!?

This from the guys who are lowballing the cost of the subject!  Also it's just a ploy got get excellent European cars off the road.  I'd rather have my BMW 741l than any of the toottoots recommended by the leftist greenies.  The supposed 'success' of this proves once again that people respond to cash incentives so imagine how one's employers will respond to the much more profitiable selection of government takeover of insurance so that they won't have to provide it!  Don't buy BO's claim that you can keep your insurance. . . you can hardly keep what's not being offered!  WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!! 

What is the purpose of this program?  Is it to sell cars, or is it to sell "green cars"?

The cars that can be purchased are only "light green", because they can get as little as 21 MPG.  Sure, this is better than 16 MPG, but 250,000 cars (the original estimate) increasing from 16 to 21 MPG won't make a dent in oil consumption. So that leaves simply selling more cars (not a bad idea, actually, but why should our tax money be used to subsidize car sales). 

And prior to this I had read that a lot of dealers didn't want to participate, because they could not re-sell the trade-in vehicle (by the CARS law, it must be destroyed). They might be able to strip some of the parts, but that isn't their business, and they really weren't interested in doing it.  So you would get less for the trade-in than normal.

So unless you had a virtually worthless clunker, you would get less for the trade-in, but get the $4,500 (or $3,500), and maybe not even get as much overall as a trade-in WITHOUT the CARS program.

And then there is the issue of poorer people now not having a cheap used car to purchase, so they get stuck with their clunkers because they can't afford a new car loan.

Yeah, there were a lot of problems with this program, but you'll never hear it from a press that calls it a "wild success" at this point, or from the dishonest 0bama administration that is not capable of projecting the full impact of any of their policies.