"OH WHAT A FEELING:” TOYOTA, NOT FORD, WINNING CASH FOR CLUNKERS WELFARE FEST

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As the U.S. Senate prepares to waste $2,000,000,000.00 more in freshly printed money borrowed from Communist China on the boondoggle known as Cash for Clunkers, it appears that Japan’s Toyota is making out like a bandit.

Early reports that the Ford Focus was the number one selling welfare poster-child for the “War on V8s” may have been incorrect. Now Toyota’s Corolla is the most popular car of choice for selfish looters who think our grandchildren ought to spot them an unearned $4,500.00 for a new car.

Four of the top five boring “transportation appliances” being purchased with CARS welfare-bailout funds are models sold by Japanese invaders. Three of the top five are from the “Evil Empire” (Toyota). (That ought to make “Rowdy” Kyle Busch and the “NASCAR Nation” ecstatic).

Ford has slumped to third in sales, behind the New GM and Toyota.

Surely this isn’t what “bailout” voucher-monger William Clay Ford, Jr. had in mind when he vigorously campaigned for the CARS Act.

On the other hand, considering FoMoCo’s pitiful performance last Monday at Pocono (a Toyota “FunnyCar of Tomorrow” won and not a single common-template “Ford” made the top 10), perhaps “Win on Monday, make welfare-subsidized sales on Tuesday” is the new rule of not-very-stock car racing.

The impotent Senate Republicans apparently got rolled on re-upping “C4C.” Although any amendment of the House version would have killed this welfare-bailout program until after the August recess (because the House couldn’t schedule a vote), the apparently clueless GOP leadership couldn’t engineer a “poison pill” amendment.

Or more likely, the Senate GOPers didn’t really want to. Redistributionist “money for nothing” schemes like the CARS Act are supposed to be against the GOP creed. But auto dealers historically have overwhelmingly supported Republicans. And big business lobby groups, such as the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Association of Automobile Manufacturers most certainly have been lobbying hard for TWO THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS more bailout “cash on-the-hood.”

So the defanged Senate Republicans seemingly raised token opposition. A filibuster apparently wasn’t even threatened. Nor did they try for a deal with left-wing Democrats to reduce eligibility or increase the spread between the “clunker” m.p.g. and the replacement “appliance” m.p.g. Nor did they revisit the issue of whether a majority of the borrowed bailout money should be going offshore to Asian and European automakers. Any of these amendments would have stopped the bleeding of the treasury and put the brakes on "C4C."

Instead, the Senate GOP went through the motions and caved into the “reality” that the “votes were there” to balloon the deficit even further by funding more sodium silicate “murders” of potentially collectable V8-powered vehicles from the 1980s and 1990s. (The toothless GOP similarly caved on the nomination of uber-liberal activist Justice Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court)

Cash for clunkers has taken another step toward becoming another permanent middle-class entitlement program. The not-so-free market has taken another broadside. The longer the "C4C" virus hangs around, the worse its corrosive effects will become.

An additional FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND vintage vehicles will be vandalized and crushed as a result of the funding. Some estimate this could inflate used car prices in the sub-$4,500.00 strata by $300.00 to $800.00 per vehicle. On models hardest hit by “C4C,” future price increases may be even higher.

Moreover, borrowing money to “invest” in depreciating assets like imported automobiles – that sounds almost like the sort of “hedge fund” shenanigans that helped trigger the financial crisis in the first place. It's hardly an engine for creation of stable, long-term jobs. It's more like a "crack cocaine" stimulus (a quick "hit" followed by an inevitable hard crash and a craving for another "fix")

But what’s worse, is the entitlement mentality that is reinforced by these welfare vouchers. The current giveaway is merely priming the pump for the greeniac’s dream “C4C” program, which would not have as many limits and would imperil many more collector and donor vehicles. And "C4C" is likely the new "rebate:" a corrosive pricing gimmick that never really goes away once the door is opened to it.

And for all of this, we’ll spend a net $20,000.00 per additional vehicle sold, cannibalize future sales from a time when GM, Ford and Chrysler might have been better positioned to compete, stick our kids with billions in new debt, kickstart inflation in some sectors of the automobile markets, further drive down our abysmal savings rate, further populate our highways with more soulless FWD Japanese invader “appliances” (as we simultaneously loot and shred our recent automotive heritage), and teach yet another generation that welfare vouchers and federal handouts are the answer.

To borrow from an old “Evil Empire” advertising slogan – Oh, What a [Wonderful] Feeling.