'Clunkers' Echoes DTV Kerfuffle

July 31, 2009— -- Unexpectedly high demand and not enough government funding: Those are the devils in the details that have led many to label the government's "Cash for Clunkers" program a victim of its own success.

The House today voted to rush an additional $2 billion into the popular but financially strapped program after the initial response was apparently too great for the government to afford.

As questions loom about whether the government can afford to keep providing subsidies to car buyers who turn in old cars, critics say it's not the first time a government program fell short on a program targeting consumers. Look no further, some say, than last year's federal digital television coupon program.

"They're great at advertising ... but they don't know how to respond when the flood comes," said Jean Chalupsky, an Omaha, Neb. resident who said the government rejected her application for coupons last year.

Started in January, 2008, the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program was intended to help ease last month's nationwide transition from analog television to digital television by providing $40 coupons to consumers to defray the cost of digital converter boxes. In the first year of the program, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued more than 40 million coupons.

But the deluge of applications caught the government off guard, and by January 2009 the NTIA announced it had run out of money to fund the coupons and had established a waiting list.

Experts say the reason that programs like "Cash for Clunkers" and the converter box coupon program run into such trouble is because cost-wary lawmakers are prone to downplaying the potential demand for such subsidies.

"Some legislators understate the number who will use particular programs to keep the costs down," said Darrell West, the vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "Then when the program proves popular, they are in a stronger position to get Congress to appropriate more money."