Kerry Picket caught a change to the $7500-per-electric vehicle giveaway to Government Motors being pushed by Michigan Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow in a proposed bill and President Barack Obama in his 2012 budget. To wit, instead of a tax credit of $7,500 for buying the Chevy Volt (and the all-electric Nissan Leaf), that $7,500 would be taken off at the dealer, with the dealer hoping to get compensated by the government at a later date. If you don’t believe Kerry’s and my assertion that it is Cash for Clunkers II, allow me to lift a couple paragraphs from the story:
In fact, Department of Energy’s David Sandalow told Bloomberg News in February the insta-credit would operate the “same way the 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program worked.”
The Detroit News reported Vice President Joe Biden said at an Indiana battery assembly plant, “You won’t have to wait,’ it would be like the cash-for-clunkers program.”
No word if the dealers will have to run glass through the engines of any cars traded in for the overpriced glorified golf carts, or whether the compensation for the dealers would be any faster than it was for the first Cash for Clunkers.
It’s also worth noting that Government Motors is currently trading at somewhere under $31/share. If the Treasury could dump its remaining 33.3% of Government Motors now, it will have lost over $13 billion on the venture, most of it transferred to the UAW.
Revisions/extensions (11:31 am 3/29/2011) – There’s more discussion at Sister Toldjah, who suggested a new liberal motto (“If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again”), The PJ Tattler from Bryan Preston, who noted all the Dem-supporting groups who will also be bailed out, and Memeorandum (just because I haven’t linked there lately).
