The Department of Transportation released figures Wednesday indicating that, as of yesterday morning, more than 316,000 new vehicles have been sold under the program, at a cost of $1.33 billion. The DOT has also released occasional top-10 lists of the best-selling models. But requests for more detailed information have been met with silence.

DOT spokeswoman Patricia Swift-Oladeinde said Wednesday that the agency simply hasn’t crunched those numbers.

Yet Lena Pons, policy analyst at Public Citizen, doubts that claim. “They have the information,” Pons said. “They have to have it to reimburse the dealers.”

Indeed, if the DOT has the data to compile top-10 lists, it surely knows also which models fill slots 11 through the rest. But, despite several Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the data (including one from Public Citizen), the administration is refusing to give up the details.

Those details could have significant consequences. When the Senate last week passed a $2 billion extension of the program, several powerful lawmakers threatened to fight the additional funding unless the guidelines were altered in favor of stricter mileage standards. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — the three who led the push for better fuel efficiency rules — were convinced those changes were unnecessary after the DOT released summary data claiming that drivers were buying up small, highly efficient cars.

“What we’ve learned is that American consumers are choosing vehicles with much higher fuel efficiency than is required,” Feinstein said in a statement announcing her change of heart.

Yet there are indications that the program isn’t promoting the vehicle sales the DOT has claimed. Indeed, although the agency says the 10 best-selling vehicles under cash for clunkers are all small cars, a separate study by Edmunds.com, an auto analysis group, found that both the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado trucks have crept onto that list. The New York Times this week quoted an anonymous White House aide conceding that the program is one “in which you trade old clunkers for new clunkers.” Dealerships are reporting sales of Cadillac SRXs and Hummer H3Ts. And even Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that, given the chance, he’d use the program to scoop up a Ford Explorer SUV, the 4WD version of which gets just 15 miles per gallon.

Considering the popularity of the program — both with consumers and the auto industry — there’s certain to be pressure on Congress to extend the program yet again if the extra $2 billion runs out quickly. Some lawmakers have hinged their support for additional funds on first getting a better understanding of what the program is doing. They can’t know the answer, however, if the administration continues to withhold the trade-in figures.

“This gives consumers a break, reduces dangerous carbon pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, and strengthens the American auto industry,” he said last month, urging Congress to approve the additional funds.

Yet The New York Times captured a wholly different sentiment coming out of the White House yesterday, quoting an anonymous senior aide doubting that the environmental benefits are worth mentioning at all.

“What we ended up with,” said one senior Obama administration official, who would not speak on the record because he was being critical of his own administration’s environmental bona fides, “is a program in which you trade in old clunkers for new clunkers.”

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Indeed, the numbers pouring out of the Department of Transportation last week seemed to indicate that drivers were turning in their gas guzzlers for vehicles with much better fuel efficiencies. The department’s official top-10 list of newly purchased vehicles included only small cars.

Yet, a reworking of that list by Edmunds.com, the auto-sales analysis group, found that the administration was playing the numbers to their advantage, CNN reported. Indeed, when Edmunds crunched the new sales by make and model, and didn’t break its analysis down further than that, both the Ford F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks worked their way into the top 10. (By contrast, the Transportation Department considered each of the five versions of those trucks to be different vehicles for tallying purposes.)

None of this matters in the near term, because the additional $2 billion is already law. But no one’s quite sure how long that funding will last, and you can bet that, if the coffers are dry when Congress returns from recess next month, there will be plenty of pressure on lawmakers to provide yet another expensive lifeline for the program. The question that remains is whether some will fight to alter the guidelines in favor of reduced emissions.

Those lawsuits haven’t been successful, according to Daniel Becker, who heads the Safe Climate Campaign, but they have stalled state efforts to fight pollution and global warming. “It would be nice to end this process,” Becker said yesterday of the advantage of including the lawsuit language in the bill.

It might not be significant at all. Senate Republicans remain as opposed as ever to the Detroit bailout, and have threatened to kill the proposal in the Senate. What else can the Democrats fold on? We might soon find out.

I do not support Chrysler Corporation receiving any federal dollars until its owner, Cerberus Capital Management L.P. (“Cerberus”), explains why it cannot provide the $8 billion loan Chrysler has requested. Cerberus’ public statement about its fiduciary duty to other investors is not sufficient. It is public knowledge that Cerberus is one of the largest private equity firms in the country.

Of course, being one of the largest private equity firms in the country means something much different today than it did before Wall Street’s collapse. Still, as Grassley points out, Cerberus-controlled GMAC has applied for help under the Wall Street bailout as well.

The firm might soon give new meaning to the term double-dipping.

On the one hand, the conflict is an interesting show of how well Democrats can stand up to a wildly unpopular president in the waning days of his teunure. They’ve already caved once in this debate, having gone back on vows not to fund the bailout from $25 billion previously allotted to revamp the automakers’ factories for the production of more fuel-efficient cars.

On the other hand, it might not matter at all. Even if the lawsuits are allowed to continue, President-elect Barack Obama is expected to grant California’s waiver as one of the early actions from the White House. If he does, it could make the current debate seem a bit futile.

California has famously applied for an Environmental Protection Agency waiver forcing emission reductions of 30 percent by 2016. But the automakers claim the change would threaten the industry by forcing it to produce two sets of vehicles: one catering to the national standard and another to the stricter standards of California.

Defending the carmakers, the EPA rejected California’s waiver last December.

The EPA denial has only fueled the debate, and more than a dozen other states have signed on to the California proposal. Florida is the latest to move in that direction, after a state panel endorsed the plan just this week. Daniel Becker, who heads the Safe Climate Campaign, said the participating states represent enough of the new car market that the automakers would be forced to make just one set of vehicles complying to California’s stricter standard.

In a Dec. 4 letter to the heads of the Big Three, Florida’s Nelson urges the begging CEOs to quit stonewalling the state waivers:

As I review your proposals for federal financial assistance, I ask you to agree not to oppose Florida’s move to mandate cleaner and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Any effort to lobby against or otherwise derail this bipartisan initiative, led by Governor Charlie Crist, would be adverse to America’s long-term energy independence.

The Big Three executives testified before the House Financial Services Committee, headed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Though Frank supports a Detroit bailout, he echoed Nelson’s concerns today, warning the CEOs today that their opposition to the new emission standards isn’t helping their cause. From The New York Times:

“You’re now suing a lot of states that are represented here,” Mr. Frank said. “That’s a serious obstacle.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) was even more forceful, as quoted by The Detroit Free Press:

Sixteen states have adopted or planned to adopt laws to lower greenhouse gas emission standards. My basic question to you is why in the world should my constituents or taxpayers in New York state or any state provide $38 billion in loans to your companies if you will continue to attempt to undo laws that we have adopted in our states?

Wouldn’t that be equivalent to giving you money to sue us?

The CEOs, of course, denied that would be the case. But these guys can compartmentalize money any way they please. Remember when bailed-out Wall Street banks justified the continued payment of shareholder dividends because they said those checks would come from a pot of money separate from the bailout cash?

Right. It’s happening again.