Cash for clunkers is one program that works

The powers-that-be in Massachusetts, perhaps the bluest state of all, recently nixed their annual sales tax holiday. Merchants weep. Apparently, the state coffers can’t spare a few dimes to stimulate the economy. Politicians, particularly the blue-state tribe, just don’t understand free-enterprise and its benefits and principles. To them, it’s a finite pie.

And while we’re on the subject, where are all those “shovel-ready� jobs? And why is the lion’s share of the porkulus loaded into the run-up to the 2012 election? (I guess we all know what motivates the Congress-critters. Time for term limits.)

My new hero is California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he torches another deep blue state’s budget. Sure, Arnold is more of a Kennedy than a Republican, but JFK was a supply-sider.  I hear the California state unions are rumbling about strikes, as they are having to pitch in to dip the debt. Nobody gets benefits like the state employees. Our employees. My employees.

Our own Gov. M. Jodi Rell (Snow White ...) in Hartford gets a “D� for a tepid, at best, effort at real spending cuts. Why on earth, as Obama adds 600,000 bureaucrats to the federal payroll, shouldn’t these government workers pay a price? Ever watch these DOT folks? The clock starts at headquarters, they drive away for their breaks and lunch, and they quit early to punch out at headquarters. Lots of expense for little result. Our tax dollars at work. This is the nature of government.

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So it’s refreshing to see something from the bureaucrats that really works, even if it is accidental: cash-for-clunkers. Clintonesque in its conception (see 100,000 cops, 50,000 cell phones, midnight basketball, etc.), it was a throw-away. But man, did the folks just jump all over it!

Sure, we can all have a good laugh at its green goals of pretty much nil, statistically. We can chuckle at the paltry $1-billion funding (now increased another $2 billion).  But it is stimulative and illustrative of how to go.

You don’t tax corporations because you are just taxing yourself as they pass on costs. You stimulate, rather than inhibit, business. You don’t soak the rich, who are already soaked. You put money, their money, back in the hands of the people.

Cash for clunkers is essentially a tax cut. Maybe that’s why it was so marginal. If we’re going to print money, why put it in the hands of the usual suspects like Ivy League, Wall Street elites and the UAW? (And why are the same Ivy League, Wall Street elites who crashed the economy still running the administration’s economic team?)

Why take a trillion bucks, and for the next year or two, filter it through the huge bureaucracy and the hands-out special interests when cash-for-clunkers is staring you in the face? I get a car, the UAW gets a job, the dealership stays in business, the community gets cash flow and jobs result. Plus, we “save the planet.�

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On the other side of the stimulative coin, the Governator is showing the way. Downsize government, cut programs, slash spending, decimate payroll. Let ’em find real jobs.Entitlement programs are clown cars: What sounds like a nice idea leads to bureaucrats, advocates and money in a never-ending stream.  Means-test everything. Tie government employee benefits to the mean.

Peter Chiesa is a Northwest Corner resident who is a semi-retired substance abuse professional.