After whipping through $1 billion in funding, the Cash for Clunkers program will wrap up next Monday, as $2 billion more in money will soon be used up by the controversial auto sales program.

Administration officials announced the move in a telephone briefing for reporters last night.  The sales stimulus effort will end on Monday at 8 pm EDT.

"This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"At the same time, we've been able to take old pulluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel efficient vehicles," he added.

The plan offered consumers vouchers from the feds of $3,500 to $4,500 to trade in an older, less fuel efficient vehicle for a newer one that got more miles to the gallon.

The feds said that as of yesterday, 457,000 vehicles had been sold through the program for $1.9 billion in rebates.

"Now we are working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program," LaHood said.

This time, there will be no emergency extension of the program, which saw an emergency addition of $2 billion before the Senate went home earlier this month.

But one can assume there will be Congressional hearings soon enough on how well the program worked, and how badly the feds ran it.

Even Secretary LaHood acknowledged that not enough federal workers were put on the program at the start, leading to delays that have frustrated dealers nationwide.

"The Department of Transportation is continuing to expand the number of people processing dealer applications for rebates by adding federal workers to the outside contractors currently at work," the department said in a statement released last night.

How many have been added?  The feds say the original number detailed to the program has been tripled in recent days by the feds.

Good thing they had that figured out, eh?