Clunker of a law

The House voted Friday to throw another $2 billion at Cash for Clunkers after the first $1 billion (apparently) ran out.

The program destroys working vehicles, prevents recycling of the most valuable components, and creates unimaginable bureaucratic hassles and invasive spyware for car dealers. Of course, the evidence is that it will have no long-term benefit — after all, it’s a perfect example of the Frédéric Bastiat broken window fallacy.

So in other words, this is a smash success by the standards of the politicians spending like drunken sailors. (Oops, retract that — it might be defamatory to naval personnel.)

Finally, if Congress is unable to accurately predict the cost of encouraging auto trade-ins — a simple transaction with a known pool of eligible vehicles — will they do any better predicting the cost of their stealth Single Payer health plan?