Clash of the Clunkers

An old van sits on display at a Chevrolet dealer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to try to entice buyers into taking advantage of the "Cash for Clunkers" program. If it had been on the Senate floor, it might have calmed Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) a bit. (By Joe Cavaretta -- South Florida Sun Sentinel Via Associated Press)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) proposed an amendment that would limit the benefit to those of modest means. "Why would we want to give a member of the Senate who makes $172,000 a year $4,500 to buy a new car?" he demanded.

But a few minutes later, Harkin returned, sheepishly, to the floor. "There is a mistake in drafting," he announced, so the lowest-income people would actually be excluded from the program.

"The way the amendment is now drafted, quite frankly, I couldn't even support it," Harkin admitted. "I'd move to table my own amendment."

Kyl saw an opportunity for mischief. "I would urge those on our side to vote against the motion to table," he declared. Harkin finally prevailed in killing his own amendment.

Clunk.

Only a few of the senators had a personal stake in the debate, judging from the cars parked outside the Capitol and across the street on Delaware Avenue. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) would probably benefit from a trade-in. An old, beat-up Buick Park Avenue had his parking pass in it; there were T.J. Maxx bags in the back. Another clunker candidate: North Dakota's Kent Conrad, whose parking pass was in an enormous old Buick, dented and missing the nameplate except for the word "Supercharged."

But, judging from the parking passes, most lawmakers' wheels are too new to qualify, and too fancy to scrap: Sen. Jim Webb's BMW 330, Kit Bond's Cadillac DHS, Stabenow's Cadillac CTS and Olympia Snowe's hybrid Lexus SUV.

Still, they weren't about to deprive voters of the clunker funds, because, as opponent McCain put it, "people like free money."

There were quibbles from various corners. Harkin didn't think it right that about half of the new cars purchased "were foreign." Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) complained that it was "a kickback to the automotive industry." McCain railed against "crackpot economics," and Kyl inartfully denounced "this crash program."

But they could not overcome the Detroit duo as they funneled more government funds to the home-state industry. Opponents, Stabenow said, "should be jumping for joy" at the success of this program. "Cash for Clunkers has exceeded earlier projections," added Levin.

"A winner on every front," tossed in Stabenow.

Even Coburn had to admit, "I've not heard from a dealer in my state who is not for this program." Still, he did his best to defend the clunkers from the scrap yard, even using a real-life example of a clunker too young to die. "We had a car traded in that had 10,000 miles on it in Oklahoma -- 10,000 miles," he said. "They destroyed the engine on the car under this program."

"We're going to destroy another $1 billion of automobiles," Coburn repeated in a final plea. "We ought not be throwing them away and ruining them."

But it was not the day for clunker compassion. By a vote of 60 to 37, the Senate doomed thousands more to the scrap yard.