CASH FOR CARS - PAGE 2

Politicians are amazing in what they do, sometimes I think they all want to be a magician - they really know the art of slight-of-hand. Any time an elected political group, whether it be state or national government passes a spending or tax bill they never tell you want is on page 2. The case cash 4 cars is such a bill.

The 1 billion dollars that congress provided for cash-4-cars became an overnight success. Give congress a big pat on the back for that. And now congress will add another 2 billion to the program. The plus side of the bill, it gets a lot of cars off the road that eat gas in large quantities and belch out a lot of pollution not to mention it helps out the auto industry. Another plus, according to a White House spokesperson, the first billion dollars also has the effect of decreasing the amount of oil this country uses by 45,000,000 barrels a year and with 3 billion that comes to 135,000,000 barrels per year - a good deal for us.

Now what was on PAGE 2 of the Cash-4-Cars. Page 2 shows that the highway fund is broke. The highway fund gets its money from the 18.5 cents tax per gallon of gas. I'm not sure how many gallons of gas you get from a barrel of oil, so I will say that it's just 1 gallon. Doing the math that means $24,975,000 is lost for the highway fund, not good since the highway fun is already broke and the white house has floated a trial balloon on the possible increase in the federal tax on gas. Now take the $24+billion and extend out for the average life of the new cars, I would think it really gets up there in the billions. But being fair, it really gets rid of a lot of pollution.

I'm not saying the Cash-4-Cars was a bad idea or was a good idea. What I'm driving at hear is the the politicians only give us the good news, never the bad news. Wouldn't it be great if there was a law in place that mandated that our politicians give us the good news and the bad news side effects. I wonder how many spending and/or tax bills will get past then.