Cash For Clunkers and Climate Change Bill Close to Passage

Make that rusted hulk worth something

A little while back, we talked about President Obama’s plan for the “Cash For Clunkers” program. It appeared to be a promising plan to spur new car sales by enabling car dealerships to take in older cars at better trade value. Better economically, better environmentally in that it promotes getting rid of old, non-green vehicles. A cash advance for and credit repair with Mother Nature, so to speak.

Now Cash For Clunkers is more than an early-stage plan. ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report that President Obama held a private meeting with Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. While working on the ins and out of “cap and trade” environmental legislation, key progress was made on the vehicle trade-in legislation.

Rust buckets for vouchers

Under the newly modified agreement, consumers can trade in any vehicle that gets 18 miles per gallon or less. They’ll receive a voucher for a new, more fuel-efficient car. The amount of the voucher will range from $3,500 to $4,500, depending upon the new vehicle’s fuel efficiency.

“Cash for Clunkers” legislation will likely be folded into a larger Climate Change bill, which sources say is on schedule to pass the House in 2009. The carbon emissions part of the proposal will put a cap on the amount of emissions that will be reduced. Within that cap we will be a market-based system that will generate innovative ways to break America’s carbon-based fuel dependency.

How green is green and other issues

Senator Waxman from California had this to say about meeting some of the key challenges before the Climate Change bill committee:

If we can reach agreement with the coal sector, with the steel, with the auto sector, with the refining sector on our committee which is very representative of the Congress on the whole, then we believe that will be a template for passage in the Senate as well.

Then there are decisions to be made about just how green a car needs to be to receive the credit through the Cash For Clunkers program. “We had to decide how green these cars need to be to get that credit,” Rep. Jay Inslee told reporters.

But the end result should be a win-win. “It’s a good agreement,” agreed former committee chairman Rep. John Dingell. Dingell has been known as a protector of the United States automobile industry, so his endorsement could mean that the last stumbling blocks toward passage will be few.

“It means auto sales, it means fuel efficiency and it means progress.”

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