The United States government has announced that they will officially pull the plug on its Cash for Clunkers program come Monday next week due to a lack of available funding.

Cash for Clunkers was conceived by the federal government as a proactive means to stimulate automobile production in a depressed economy, as well as to get “gas guzzlers” off the road, leading to a smaller environmental footprint for the transportation industry. The program started in July 24, and was expected to run up to November 1 of this year.

However, demand and participation in the program was so huge that the program was chewing near the end of its initial US$1 billion budget soon after it started. The U.S. Congress approved a further US$2 billion to help it along, but that, too, was gone in two weeks.

The U.S. Government does recognize that the program had been extremely successful, with significantly higher automobile sales than before, and automobile manufacturers like General Motors, Ford and Toyota reporting increased work activity and productivity. U.S. President Barack Obama says in a radio interview that the program “had been successful beyond anybody’s imagination.”

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