The other looming debate over ‘Cash for Clunkers’ funding

WASHINGTON — While U.S. Senate leaders have reached agreement on a $2 billion extension of the cash for clunkers program, many lawmakers are already bracing for a more distant confrontation: The likely debate over how to return that funding to another stimulus program that it came from.

The U.S. House last Friday provided the generous lifeline to the wildly popular clunkers program — which grants drivers up to $4,500 to scrap their gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles — and the Senate is poised to pass that bill Thursday. But there’s a glitch. The proposal steals its funding from a Department of Energy program encouraging the development of renewable energy technologies. That initiative, granted $6 billion under this year’s stimulus bill, provides federal loan guarantees to clean energy projects — including solar, wind and biofuel innovations — in hopes of spurring private investment in those industries. Tens of billions of dollars in loan applications are before the DOE, but the program funding was seen by lawmakers as low-hanging fruit because it wouldn’t be spent until next year, at the earliest.

Read more at Michigan Messenger’s sister site in the nation’s capital, The Washington Independent.