CASH FOR CLUNKERS CRASHES - program ends prematurely

The Washington Post reported today that the popular federally-funded Cash for Clunkers program that helped bail out the sinking ships of many auto dealerships is coming to a premature close. Come Monday, that clunker of a program is shut down.

The program was initially funded by $1 billion from the government. When consumers rushed dealerships to trade in their clunkers for more debt, Congress rushed back to its committees seeking $2 billion more to prop up the program, which had burned through $1 billion before Congress could congratulate itself on the program's perceived success. $3 billion later and there's no end to how much money this program could eat. Leave it to the government to create a money-guzzling program to buy gas-guzzling cars. Wow!

Well, it's over now. On Monday, Aug. 24, say goodbye to yet another failed idea by the government, which cost the taxpayers — I mean our grandchildren — more money that we didn't have. But hey, we saved an ailing car industry, didn't we?

Um, the answer would be ... no, we didn't.