Cash for whom? Clunkers program a lemon

The Union Leader calls the "Cash for Clunkers" program a "colossal economic failure".

What that means is that instead of an average taxpayer cost of $4,000 per vehicle, as the Obama administration claims, the program's actual cost was $24,000 for each vehicle that otherwise would not have been sold.

And what did all that cash buy the American people? Detroit and the White House say it boosted auto production and stimulated the economy when it needed the most stimulating. But think about that. The government paid people $226 billion to buy cars in the summer instead of later in the year.

Using tax dollars to subsidize the destruction of functional automobiles is a remarkably silly idea, even if the government had been able to come up with some statistics to defend the program. But now we know that most of the people who trashed their used cars to get the program's benefit would have bought a new car even without the fatally flawed program.