Missouri’s junior senator is on the fence about approving more money for the Cash for Clunkers program. But Senator McCaskill is leaning. "I don’t think anybody will be surprised if I cash a negative vote," she says. But officially, McCaskill has not made up her mind.
She wants to make sure dealers don’t get left holding the bag for thousands of dollars when the program ends. She worries that Chrysler and General Motors, after getting billions of federal dollars, don’t have enough inventory available to meet consumer needs–thereby pushing potential customers into the arms of a competitor.
She looks at the list of top ten new cars sold in the program so far—two Fords, a dodge, a Chevrolet, three Toyotas, a couple of Hondas, and a Hyundai and sees another problem: She says the government has put billions of dollars into General Motors and Chrysler and does not want to see a program that penalizes the companies into which the government has sunk so much money.
She also says 60 to 70-thousand clunkers are traded in every month anyway—so the program has only speeded up transactions that would have been made anyway…and might throw car sales out of whack next year.
She’s officially undecided, though.
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