Health-care deform and clunker budgeting

"Cash for Clunkers under budget with 690,000 sales" was the headline of an Associated Press story published Aug. 26, 2009. The clunkers program was originally approved for $1 billion. The amount was exhausted so fast that Congress increased it to $3 billion, and now it is being declared "under budget" because only $2.88 billion was spent.

That's logic only a liberal can love.

But maybe we mere mortals did not understand the definition of success for the clunkers program. It did generate a 1 percent increase in U.S. car sales for August of 2009 versus a year ago, an increase that is 0.1 percent of the total number of vehicles sold in 2008. Additionally, the 690,114 automobiles sold replaced 0.3 percent of all cars and trucks on U.S. roads and highways with more fuel efficient and less polluting vehicles. Wow!

The AP story also said "The Obama administration declared the program a major success, saying Cash for Clunkers provided a needed stimulus to the auto industry and the broader economy." Autos represent about 3.6 percent of the broader economy in total, which got a 0.1 percent boost for the year. That's not much economic mileage to be declared a major success, but again, that's liberal logic.

Of course the sales would have been much worse without the clunkers program. We will never know how much worse, nor will we know how many of those cars would have been bought later in the year anyway. Many dealers are still waiting to get reimbursed for most of the cars they sold because of bureaucratic red tape, which creates a drain on their cash flow and makes it harder to keep doing business smoothly.

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Maybe the clunkers program was intended to prop up sales of the now government-owned General Motors and 55 percent union-owned Chrysler. According to another AP story, privately owned Ford and Honda (American) sales were up 17 percent and 10 percent respectively, whereas, General Motors and Chrysler sales were down 17 percent and 15 percent respectively.

The president's car czar is really doing a great job! That's liberal logic again.

Cash for Clunkers has some similarities to Medicare and Social Security.

If the cost projections are wrong, the government just spends more money when the time comes. If the program is headed for bankruptcy, it just ignores the problem. When government bureaucracy slows down the process and puts a financial burden on businesses and taxpayers, so what? And no matter what the outcome, the program is declared a success.

The president and the Democrats want to add our health-care system to the list. Our health-care system is not 0.1 percent of our broader economy. It is nearly 17 percent. Missing the projected costs would not be a $2 billion mistake. It would be a $2 trillion mistake, or more.

The Transportation Department added 1,100 employees to administer one clunkers program, and many dealers are still waiting to get reimbursed. The Democrats' health-care deform legislation, or H.R. 3200, would create 53 new government programs, offices and bureaucracies!

Liberal logic says those 53 new bureaucracies will be deficit neutral, will not lead to long wait times for medical services, will be cost-effective and will not lead to health-care rationing.

Common sense and history say none of that would happen.

When dealers have to wait to be reimbursed for clunker car sales, they lose money.

When people have to wait to get medical services, they lose their lives.

People are not clunkers.

We the People deserve real health-care reform – like the Republican-proposed H.R. 3400 – not another dysfunctional government program.