Every now and then an idea comes along that is so fatally flawed, so breathtakingly ill-conceived, such an affront to logic and fairness, that you just know it was designed by some Congressman, maybe with some lobbyist assistance.
Good guess! Except that in this case, it's actually a Congresswoman, namely Betty Sutton of Ohio, who takes credit for authoring the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act, H.R. 2751, and is promoting it heavily on her website. Sutton's site devotes a long paean to the brilliance of this legislation, but the core of it is this statement: "The bill will help consumers purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles, improve our environment and boost auto sales." Sorry, but it's hard to see how it will do any of those things very effectively. This is typical Congressional "feel good" legislation; everybody wants on the bandwagon (there are 59 co-sponsors and the bill passed the House 298-119); it tries to project the image that Congress is addressing people's problems but it will be ineffective and is too late.
More fuel-efficient? The standards are clownish. Not too bad for passenger cars; to get a $4,500 voucher the mileage rating of your new ride has to be 10 mpg better than your old one. But hey, you can get nearly as much ($3,500) if you buy a new vehicle getting only 4 (FOUR) mpg better. For SUVs, you only have to get 5, or 2 (TWO!) mpg better in order to qualify for $4,500 or $3,500 respectively. For pickups and vans, the mileage improvement only needs to be 2, or 1 (ONE!) mpg, respectively. How worthless is that? I would guess many people could trade in their two-year old gas-guzzler for the current model of the same thing, and qualify.
Which is another bothersome thing about the legislation. There is no limit on how new your trade-in can be. It must have been manufactured in 1984 or after; but if the idea is to get the least efficient (and perhaps dangerous) "clunkers" off the road, why wouldn't we set a limit on the other end, say after 1984 but before 2004? And let's be sure we do get them off the road. Well, the drafters did at least think of this part, and dealers who take the old vehicles in trade are supposed to "certify" that they are, or will be, scrapped. A nice thought, but it's not clear how that could be enforced; I would anticipate loads of these clunkers getting back on the road through unscrupulous scrappers and resellers.
So, forget the "fuel efficiency" argument. Only a car manufacturer or dealer could conceive this plan as "fuel efficiency." Coincidentally, both groups have lobbied for, and probably had a hand in drafting, this legislation. Fuel efficiency is a smokescreen for the other purpose: incentives to sell more cars. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing; we do want to revive the consumer economy, don't we? But that's where "too little, too late" comes in; H.R. 2751 is unnecessary now.
Too little, because although the standards for gas mileage seem very generous, the amounts of the vouchers are probably too small to persuade many people to make the leap. My local TV news interviewed three owners of SUVs/pickups last night; all said it wasn't enough to spur them to buy a new vehicle. Unnecessary, because an uptick in auto sales is already being reported without this legislation. It's small, at only a half-percent, but the trend may already be under way. Also, because the rising price of gas is going to be a far better incentive for people to trade up than anything in this legislation.
Congresswoman Sutton's website doesn't say the legislation is fair, but I think it should be. I understand and support the need to bail out elements of our financial system on which we all depend for stability, but these vouchers are a bailout to individuals who could have made different buying decisions. The population at large is not really affected by the gasoline bills these consumers now pay. It's particularly galling that many of those who qualify for vouchers will probably be the same ones who benefited from the big SUV-buyer tax breaks that were available until a couple of years ago. So, where's the reward for those who already drive more fuel-efficient cars?
I have to side with the bill's 119 opponents. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, someone I don't often agree with, declared the bill itself is a "clunker." And so it is. It's bad legislation by a herd of sheep; they might have spent their energy more effectively on increasing the gas tax, but that would require foresight and political courage.
The Senate is considering a version of this bill too; there will be pressure to move quickly. I'm writing my Senators.
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