A friend of mine is the wife of a well known car dealer in King County. She gave me a great picture of how this so-called "successful" government program is wreaking havoc in a typical dealership. An excerpt of her e-mail to me follows. I don't want to compromise the identity, so I changed names "to protect the innocent!"

This program is a perfect demonstration of how liberals fail everytime they try to "fix" something. Only months ago we saw family run car dealerships who were turning a profit forced to close their car lots after the government "rescue" of GM and Chrysler. The czars at the top, in their infinite wisdom, decided which lots would close based on random selection rather than rewarding the businesses who had shown success. The result? Lost jobs and wages that did not need to be lost.

Now the feds have decided to meddle with the free market again by "awarding" welfare to certain consumers (those wanting to buy a newer car) on certain products (cars with a certain energy use profile), with an eye toward subsidizing and rewarding what products the government approves of....namely certain cars. Here is the skinny how it is impacting one dealership:

There are about 20 items that have to be in place for the clunker to be accepted.  Once this deal is done, "Dave" is required  to put a certain liquid in the engine which destroys it and the car is to be sold for scrap. The govt allocated enough funds to cover about 250,000 cars. People have been running to the dealerships to get rid of their old cars.
 
The problem comes in entering the necessary information to the computer system.  It took "Dave's" sales team 7 hours to input one deal the other day. It’s not much quicker today.  The system is clogged.  Apparently the government only allocated $50,000 to the actual admnistration of the program.   He came home at 1am last night because the only time the inputs go through is when the East Coast is closed and people have given up.  So all this raises questions:
 
If a sale is made, but information has not been completely entered into the computer system, will it be considered valid when the funds run out?
The people are driving around in their new cars.  Should he destroy the old car when he’s not sure the funds from the govt will arrive? 
Should he call the customers and tell them the deals may have to be reversed?
He can’t formally input the last part of the deal unless he has documentation the car was destroyed but doesn’t want to destroy the car unless he knows the government will fulfill their part of the bargain.

It’s month end.  Does he report these as “sales” to Toyota, or not , since they could be reversed?
What does he do today when the funds have run out but people are still continuing to come in and asking for the program?  Does he believe that the govt will be forthcoming with more funds?  How long will those last?
 
There are many, many other questions.  The govt is not forthcoming with many answers.  Toyota told them to stop selling, then today told them to continue.  Meanwhile,  all these dealers are out there with a lot of risk.  We are in better shape than most dealers because we have good working capital but other dealers which are not in good condition have quite a headache.   The govt promises the $$ in 10 days direct deposit in the bank account but what good does that do if we can't get the deals input due to computer backlog issues?
 
We have no way of knowing whether the funding will continue or not.  People are coming in asking for the program but he’s not sure he should continue it.  Every deal puts him at risk of not receiving the $4500 from the government.  He had almost $200,000 in receivables account for it as of last night.   It’s just crazy.  Was  the “car czar” on vacation when this program was being developed? 
 
When you listen to the news, it’s all so positive – how well it’s worked, etc.  The ones who have to deal with it know better.  I love the “Cash for Cluckers” comment from the Texas rep! 
 
Do we really want the government running health care?   Give me a break!