Reply #8: actually, there is plenty of money in the program. It was just set up badly [View All]

[onenote]

The program is budgeted for 33 million coupons -- around 1.3 billion dollars. Around 22 million coupons have now been redeemed, so there is theoretically money to redeem another 11 million coupons. But the way the program is set up, they can't issue more coupons since there are over 10 million unredeemed, unexpired coupons ('active' coupons) sitting in the hands of the public. Redemption rates have been at around 55 percent, so it can be expected that after all of the active coupons either expire or are redeemed, there will be money available to issue several million coupons. ONe of the things that the extension legislation does is provide for additional money (a) so the government can resume issuing coupons to those who have been on a waiting list for the past several weeks and (b) have more money in case it turns out that they did underestimate the number of people who would need/want the coupons.

Statistics on the number of coupons issued, redeemed, active, wait listed etc here:
https://www.dtv2009.gov/Stats.aspx