Eideard

In Europe, hundreds of thousands of car owners have taken advantage of government subsidies to get rid of their old vehicles and trade up to new ones. Car sales in Germany are up about 40 percent from a year ago.

But a similar so-called cash-for-clunkers program that starts in July in the United States is not expected to have nearly the same impact.

While the program, which President Obama signed into law this week, gives consumers a credit that is in line with the payments in Europe — up to $4,500 — what qualifies as a “clunker” in the United States is far more limited.

Further, the American program has $1 billion in financing, enough for about 250,000 consumers to use it, and ends Nov. 1, or sooner if the money runs out. Germany, on the other hand, originally expected to spend 1.5 billion euros to get 600,000 old cars off the road. But the program proved so popular, the government this spring raised the budget to 5 billion euros for two million cars and extended the deadline to the end of 2009…

“It’s better than nothing, that’s for sure,” said George Pipas, the Ford Motor Company’s chief sales analyst. “Anything to get consumers off the couch and give them a reason to go to the dealership.”

Perish the thought the overpaid politicians in Congress should do something that might help out working folks!

They’d rather continue to feather their nest, play kissy-kissy with lobbyists, whine about overspending our tax dollars – as if they hadn’t been doing that for the past eight years. 2010 is becoming more and more a target year to shove another couple dozen corporate lawyer-politicians out the door. Send them looking for an honest job.