Auto ‘Clunkers’ Offer in Doubt After Going Through $1 Billion

“It is amazing that ‘cash for clunkers’ would be this successful this quickly,” said Stabenow in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “I urge Congress and the administration to provide additional funding.”

What's so amazing about it? When government sustains output, incomes and employment (in the absence of sufficient private sector demand), cars are going to be sold, along with houses, computers, machinery, food and all the other things we need to live or enjoy quality lives.

“This was a very successful program, maybe even too successful,” Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said yesterday in a statement. “The program should continue, but perhaps with a tune-up so that we get the most stimulus, conservation and efficiency for the buck.”

Yes, God forbid that, as a nation, we live at our means. It's like Schumer has some guilt complex (along with his colleagues in Congress, the media and most of the American people). It's too successful, so we'd better scale it back and live at a lower standard.

Like Keynes said, the choice is ours: "Live in a constant state of semi-boom, or subsist in a perpetual quasi slump."