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Of the $1.9 billion worth of vouchers submitted by car dealers under the “Cash for Clunkers” program, the Department of Transportation has sent payments totaling just $145 million, a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.
The official said the DOT has reviewed “just under 170,000″ of the 457,000 dealer submissions, but incomplete forms and other technical [...]

Facing morning headlines that auto dealers are dropping out of the popular “Cash for Clunkers” program because the government hasn’t reimbursed the vouchers, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) fired off a letter to the Department of Transportation today urging administration officials to expedite their payments and provide dealers with “more certainty” that the money [...]

Even as it’s releasing frequent updates on the money being spent under the hugely popular “Cash for Clunkers” program, the Obama administration is still refusing to reveal details about what cars are being scrapped and sold.
The Department of Transportation released figures Wednesday indicating that, as of yesterday morning, more than 316,000 new vehicles have been [...]

With information only on the first $69 million of the $1 billion spent on a taxpayer-sponsored voucher program, some lawmakers and environmentalists are calling on Congress to hold off on shelling out $2 billion more.

You’d think that, granted the bully pulpit, the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation might actually use it when approached by Congress for advice on public transit funding.
But you’d be wrong.
Asked yesterday by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) if the House-passed climate change bill contains enough funding for public transit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appeared to have [...]

Rep. Ray LaHood has a terrible record on the environment. The Illinois Republican, picked by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Dept. of Transportation, voted to expand oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to gut a green-building initiative, to slacken protections of grasslands and wetlands, and to kill a proposal hastening the nation’s [...]