Clunker Program Allowed Some Truck Trades for Less Efficient Vehicles
But Language Permitting Such Trades Was In the Legislation Almost From the Start
The feds have published a detailed list of trade-ins and purchases under the summer's Cash for Clunkers program and some media have picked up on an item we cautioned about before the program became law.
It allowed owners of some older pickups and vans to trade them in for new trucks with lower fuel economy.
We don't know the details of every one of the 150 or so "worse gas mileage' trades that were made (according to an Associated Press analysis), and some may have been approved in error or even through outright fraud, but they really shouldn't have taken anyone by surprise.
Way back in May, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began considering the "Car Allowance Rebate System" or CARS bill with language that clearly approved of those "worse mileage" trades.
It specified that owners of pre-2002 work trucks could trade them in and get a $3,500 voucher for new trucks in the same or lighter weight classes, with no requirement for improved fuel economy.
There were no fuel economy limits specified - unlike provisions requiring qualifying passenger cars and trucks to be traded-in only on vehicles that got better gas mileage - because, the committee noted, the newer trucks would have much better emissions controls than the older ones and thus the trades would be beneficial.
Fuel economy constraints, the reasoning went, might curtail some activity and keep older, dirtier trucks on the streets.
We pointed it out then, and we pointed it out again in June, just before the Senate passed the measure and the President signed it into law.
We just checked and it is still there - the CARS act, Section 1302, subsection (b), item 1, sub-paragraph D.
You can argue the logic - we thought the whole bill, for work trucks and for passenger vehicles, didn't go far enough in requiring participants to buy vehicles with improved fuel efficiency.
What started out in January as an environmental measure became, by summer, a plan for helping automakers - especially "our" automakers - move metal in a deep recession.
But the shame isn't on the program for permitting those few "worse mileage" trades - it's on those professing shock and outrage now when they should have been studying the measure and raising the issue before it was approved.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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- John O'Dell November 5, 2009, 3:00 AM
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- Fuel Economy, Legislation, Opinion
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- Cash for Clunkers, Cash For Clunkers Truck Trades, Fuel Economy, Worse Mileage Trade Ins
But class 3 trucks don't have fuel economy estimates..
Si - and if the 150 worse mileage trades that the AP analysis identified all were illegitimate, we're talking a 0.02% error (or fraud) rate, which isn't that bad for a federal program. The issue is that as people start pulling the data apart and yelling that, gee, there were trade-ins that got better mileage than the new purchases, or that the whole program didn't really mean much in terms of overall MPG improvement - another increasingly common, and valid, complaint - we need to remember that those flaws were identified and talked about by some before the law was passed. Its not as if though the bad guys slipped on over on us. We (that the collective "we") let it happen by not objecting loudly enough when we had advance knowledge.
So either people were not aware of those forewarnings (likely due to not caring enough to research), or accepted the loopholes/shortcomings in light of the greater benefit.
I thought it was a lousy idea once it became clear that the focus shifted from reducing pollution to stimulating the auto industry.