I think this is all P.R. I don’t think a non-ifficieant refrigerater has been sold in years. And all the Cash for Clunkers program did was make oboy look good, give a lot to junk metal companies and screw the dealers.
This $300M may be a new increment of funding, but programs exactly like it have been around since the late 1980's/early 1990s. The justification is that adding a MW of new capacity in terms of generation is very expensive - and encouraging a MW of discretionary demand (things like dishwashing which can be time shifted) to move off peak saves the cost (to rate payers) of building that extra MW of capacity. Thus you have seen all sorts of things like rebates on fluorescent lighting to rebates on "EnergyStar" products of all types.
The real questions is does the effectiveness hypothesized when these programs are proposed and authorized ever come into being? Your local public service regulatory body must approve the incentives and the method for recovering the cost of the subsidy, or, in some cases the Congress must, in theory, evaluate the benefits of the program before authorizing the expenditure of its cost. But in terms of actual behavior it is often found that there is a snapback phenomenon - in which increased use diminishes the assumed savings from the more efficient device/appliance/lightning fixture. People think, I now have a more efficient appliance/device, therefore I can use it 2x as much as the old one. That behavior phenomenon's pretty well documented.
I like to think of my own experience in the mid 1990's while living in Madison Wisconsin. The local utility had a rebate program on high efficiency fluorescents an the rebate program expired on 12/31 of that year. A local retailer had a boatload of inventory as the year ended and offered a 100% rebate, on top of which the utility would pay you some amount (say $5 per bulb). I didn't need any, but since they were free at retail and earned a rebate, I picked up 4 of them. Trying them out in the house I realized that the color temperature of the light they generated was unpleasant. So I installed one in the basement where color temperature wasn't so important, because one was seldom down there. Thus the assumption of the planner was immediately violated. Somewhere in some file at the Public Service Commission is an application to offer this DSM program and there was an assumption that the new technology would replace an old technology (like an incandescent lamp in a living room burning x hours per day) and that was completely violated. So, the impact of these programs in practice is very questionable. But, big point - this is nothing new.