President Obama's biggest common-touch coup to date is the Cash for Clunkers program, which was so popular that instead of running until fall, it crashed like a speeding SUV into its original limit of $1 billion within a week.
On the environmental side, the early results of the program were enough to mollify—somewhat—critics who said the environmental bar had been set too low because people could get a $3,500 rebate for buying new cars that only gave them a 4-mile per gallon advantage over the cars they were trading in (those who gained a 10-mpg advantage or better got $4,500).
The most important gain: According to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the average fuel efficiency for the new cars the program's beneficiaries bought was 9.6 mpg higher than for the cars they turned in (a difference the White House says will save their owners $700 to $1,000 a year on gas).
On average, the newly purchased vehicles were getting 25.4 mpg, a 61 percent improvement over the traded-in "clunkers," which averaged 15.8 mpg. These calculations were based on 80,500 purchases fed into the government's data processing system by the time the program's first $1 billion infusion ran out.
LaHood also reported that about 80 percent of the tradeins were pickups or SUVs—evidence that the program put out of commission thousands of heavy, fuel-scarfing vehicles. The five most popular models for purchase were smaller cars: Ford Focus, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry. Forty-seven percent of the new vehicles rebate receivers bought were made by Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.
There's room for argument about the usefulness of Cash for Clunkers, but the psychological point is vital: it got an environmental value down to the everyman level, even made it fun. Britain and Germany believed in the idea enough to invest in similar programs.
