Cash for Clunkers Drove Car Sales -- Now It's Time for the "Hangover" Stories

"Staten Island's car dealers brace for post-'Clunkers' letdown," says the Staten Island Advance. Wait a minute -- we thought the program was a failure! Certainly rightbloggers like to say so. Wizbang called it "a complete failure" -- because it hadn't disbursed most of its funds. (And you thought they opposed big government spending.) The payouts have indeed been slow, but out in the real world, the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) received 625,000 applications for $2.58 billion in rebates. The major automakers sold a lot of cars -- Ford's July sales were nine percent higher than last July's, and total U.S. sales for August are expected to top 1 million.

Now that it's over, it's time to talk about the Cash for Clunkers "hangover" and worry about its lasting impact on the economy ("A Jolt for Car Sales, Not a Fix," says AP. "The big rush to car lots this month may have had the unintended effect of stealing sales from this fall and next year"). Thus does the liberal media carry Obama's water. Photo (cc) rjs1322.