Compared to the infinite complexity of health care and health insurance, cash for clunkers is kindergarten stuff. You trade in your old car for a new one that gets (slightly) better mileage and the government gives you money — between $3,500 and $4,500. How hard is that?

Pretty hard, apparently. The Washington Times reports this morning that this simple, basic Big Gummint program has spun totally out of control: It was clearly not thought through (even a little), it was under-budgeted by 2 or 3 hundred percent (and counting), and it was woefully under-resourced – such that staff have to be hired from the outside or pulled away from other government functions (like running air-traffic control) in order to clear the backlog. Clearing the backlog, by the way, is a 24/7 operation that’s also requiring additonal budgeting for overtime pay and a training program. The Times relates:

The U.S. Transportation Department, billions of dollars behind in paying “cash-for-clunkers” rebates, has hired private contractors and solicited volunteers from the Federal Aviation Administration and its own executive ranks to work overtime to clear the backlog. Employees of the FAA’s air-traffic-control unit were asked to help, but the Transportation Department stressed Friday that essential safety personnel were not diverted from their duties. A total of 1,200 workers, including about 300 contractors from Citigroup, the financial services giant, are now working seven days a week to review applications and reimburse auto dealers for rebates advanced to customers, officials said. The department tripled its program staff to 1,100 last week, and recently added another 100 headquarters employees. . . .
From the start, the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, proved too popular for its $1 billion budget and the several hundred employees assigned to the program. Planners who expected to sell 250,000 cars in three months are now deluged with nearly twice that many applications seeking more than $2 billion in rebates after less than one month. Only 7 percent of the rebates have been paid, leaving many auto dealers out millions of dollars. Dealers were supposed to be repaid within 10 days. . . .
Days after the program began, the Transportation Department had to seek additional funding. So many deals were in the pipeline, officials couldn’t be sure when the original funding would be exhausted, and dealers were concerned they would be left holding the bag. Congress approved $2 billion in additional funding on Aug. 7. “We set up the program in 30 days, which was what Congress gave us,” said Jill Zuckman, assistant to Mr. LaHood. “No one anticipated that 250,000 cars would be sold in the first four days. It proved to be more than the people we had available could handle.” Dealers exacerbated the problem by making many thousands of deals before final program rules were posted on July 24, she said. . . .
John D. Porcari, deputy secretary of transportation and the former top transit official in Maryland, was training Friday to help process applications this weekend. Mr. LaHood was out of town on business and missed the training session, Ms. Zuckman said.
One reason the department decided to wind down the program Monday is because it couldn’t risk exceeding the program’s $3 billion budget while Congress was in recess, she said.

All this from the people who, Mark Steyn reminds us this morning, tell you that the way to control health-care costs is to set up a huge new entitlement program (even as the ones they’ve already set up sink deeper into a multi-trillion dollar sea of unfunded liabilities). Why do we trust them to do anything other than the very few things for which you actually need a government? How ’bout a deal where we leave health care and the auto biz to private industry, but ask the government to see if it can at least keep convicted mass-murderers in jail?