A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.
A replacement higher mileage vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce  U. S. gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year for each vehicle replaced.
About 700,000 vehicles were purchased, so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.
That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil per year. The entire 5 million barrels saved by the program is only about 6 hours worth of U.S. oil consumption per year. More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $80 per barrel cost about $400 million dollars.
So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save the $400 million.
The government spent $7.50 for every dollar saved.
But there is another important aspect about this program that should leave everyone wondering if they've missed something.  Specifically, wouldn't people who were thinking about buying a car anyway shift the timing of their buying to take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program? And doesn't that mean that the program wouldn't result in any actual lift in net car sales for the year?  Hasn't it simply drained sales from the months just before and after the program was implemented?

We are proud of these accomplishments, and we are closer than ever to achieving our goal of worldwide eradication. But we must recognize that our greatest enemy is complacency.
We cannot slacken our efforts now, because as long as there is wild poliovirus anywhere, the disease can easily spread again.
The number of cases in endemic countries is down this year, but the number of cases in countries where polio has been reintroduced has increased significantly -
Polio is still endemic in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Difficult terrain, civil unrest, remote settlements, poor sanitation, and terrible poverty are just some of the obstacles to immunization.
But we, and our partners in the Global Polio eradication Initiative, are determined to continue our work with persistence and creativity.
I have been inspired by the incredible strides already made this year.
In one 10-day period, a total of 222,270,331 children in 22 countries were immunized against
polio.
The effort and the commitment are phenomenal. This is a testament to the resolve that has brought us this far - and that will soon bring us to our goal of complete eradication.