Included in Joe Biden’s $2.5 trillion grab bag of progressive priorities — billed as an infrastructure package — is a rehashed sequel to the Obama-era Cash for Clunkers program which would spend 33 times the original version to shell out rebate payments to wealthy electric vehicle owners.
Biden’s plan calls for $174 billion in spending to “create good jobs electrifying vehicles.” For comparison, that’s $59 billion more than the plan would spend on roads and bridges. While inexplicably labeled as a jobs plan, the bulk of the funding is in fact set aside to provide $100 billion in point-of-sale rebates on electric vehicles (EVs), a concept reportedly modeled off legislation introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to revive and expand the Obama administration’s $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program.
A poster-child for the wasteful spending and failed “green” programs of the 2009 Obama stimulus, Cash for Clunkers was widely recognized as a boondoggle by the media and both sides of the political aisle. Politico described the program as a “sputtering old jalopy that deserves to stay in the scrap yard.” A National Bureau of Economic Research report found “nearly 60 percent of the subsidies went to households who would have purchased during the two-month program anyway.” Even the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute found the program spent $1.4 million for every job it created, rebuffed it as an “inefficient approach to reducing emissions” and specifically recommended the program be avoided in the event of a future recession.
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