Where’d they come up with that name?

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — “Cash for Clunkers” is the policy buzz-term of the moment, dominating news headlines and auto-dealership commercials and rolling off tongues more quickly than it took Congress to approve the additional $2 billion for the wildly popular program earlier this month.

But despite the recent “Clunker” craze, the term and its concept aren’t new — dating back at least to the first President Bush, whose administration endorsed vehicle trade-in programs in 1992 as part of its push for cleaner air.

“Accelerated Vehicle Retirement” (AVR) programs — encouraged within states and aimed at providing economic incentives for individuals and industry to scrap highly polluting vehicles — were simultaneously dubbed “cash for clunkers” or “clunker-junker” programs by the media and policymakers by the early 1990s.

So why the recent surge in “Clunker”-mania?

The nationwide tipping point appears to have been a July 27, 2008, New York Times op-ed by economist Alan Blinder, after which the term “Cash for Clunkers” spread through the media and Internet like a gasoline fire.

Blinder’s piece, “A Modest Proposal: Eco-Friendly Stimulus,” argued a “Cash for Clunkers” program would be “a timely stimulus in 2009.” Blinder reintroduced the term — “Cash for Clunkers” — as “a generic name” for a variety of government programs aimed at buying and scrapping polluting vehicles.

Thereafter news articles began referencing Blinder’s proposal, dropping the quotation marks as the term has so rapidly been driven into common parlance.

Jessica Rett, an assistant professor of linguistics at UCLA, said she considers “Cash for Clunkers” catchy and effective, mostly because it’s alliterative.

Rett said alliteration is commonly used in poems to emphasize rhythm and is often used to aid memory.