Beltway rag, The Hill offers a quick-and-dirty (it is Washington, you know) on the practice of using official funds to lease vehicles for lawmakers' personal use. It seems congresspeople get to lease cars for two years, spending an average of $646.53 per month in taxpayer dollars. And they're not exactly riding in The People's Econoboxes, either. Among the 122 cars leased by 115 lawmakers (seven of them get two?), as writer Jonathan E. Kaplan points out, many are gas guzzlers, including Cadillac Devilles for NY's Charlie Rangel (D) and Michigan's Carolyn Kilpatrick (D).
What's more, some aren't even 'merican like NY Democrat Maurice Hinchey's BMW 525 and Florida Republican Tom Feeney's Nissan Pathfinder. Kaplan also lashed out at New York reps like Vito Fossella (R) of Staten Island (Jeep Grand Cherokee) who lease cars when "public transportation and cabs are readily available," as if Staten Island wasn't like two time zones from Manhattan.
Lawmakers are leasing gas guzzlers [The Hill]
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Forbes on CAFE Standards: Let the Market Dictate [internal]