Cash For Clunkers Program Mired In Bureaucracy

Car dealers in NY and around the country are frustrated with the federal government's "cash for clunkers" program and are opting out—because they haven't received reimbursements yet! According to the Post, "about half" of the Greater New York Automobile Association's 425 members "say they've dropped out because they've gotten only 2 percent of the millions of dollars owed them by Washington," leading the association's president Mark Schienberg to complain, "It's an administrative nightmare...Cash flow is extremely important," and point out that when dealers try to fill out the 13-pages of paperwork, "Their [computer system] crashes all the time and you can't talk to anyone. It's extremely frustrating." The feds say they have processed 37% of applications, but Bloomberg News reports the Department of Transportation "didn’t say how many of the processed transactions have been paid out and how many were rejected or sent back to dealers for further information."