The Government Loves Its Cars, All 642,233 of Them

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — Americans love their cars, and so apparently does Uncle Sam. He’s got 642,233 of them.

Operating those vehicles — maintenance, leases, and fuel — cost taxpayers a whopping $3.4 billion last year, according to General Services Administration data obtained and analyzed by the Associated Press.

While Cabinet and other officials say they need the vehicles to do their jobs, watchdogs say mismanagement of the government fleet is costing millions of dollars a year in wasteful spending.

For example:

  • At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, fuel consumption and inventory are down, yet overall costs have increased significantly. Officials there can’t figure out why.
  • The Interior Department was told by its own watchdog that it should cut its inventory, but it’s added hundreds of vehicles.
  • The Department of Veterans Affairs has some cars that are barely driven. One just disappeared.

Add to that the cost of drivers, a perk given to high-level government officials.

The Transportation secretary, Mary Peters, has two drivers. Their salaries totaled more than $128,000 last year.

The driver for the Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, earns about $90,000 a year. That’s more than double the average salary of an office manager or accountant, and about $35,000 more than a registered nurse earns, according to a salary calculator provided by CareerBuilder.com.

The government owns or leases sedans, SUVs, trucks, limousines, and ambulances for more than three dozen agencies, the American military, and the Postal Service. Are they all really necessary?

“This is one bleeding part of a budget and not just in one department but in a lot of departments,” Senator Grassley, a Republican of Iowa and longtime foe of what he considers wasteful federal spending, said. “When you have something bleeding like this, there can be a lot of money saved.”

Only a handful of agencies said they have conducted annual audits to ensure their fleets are the right size. All agencies are supposed to report their annual fleet numbers to the General Services Administration. However, the cost and inventory estimates in the GSA’s annual report do not include Congress, which isn’t required to report to GSA on its fleet.


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