Pimp My Ride, Taxpayers

Today's topic centers around an article from the NY Times (not my favorite publication) that ran on May 1, 2008. It tied in nicely to a story I heard recently on the tv news that stated Congressmen and Senators get free gasoline for their cars while in Washington while the rest of us pay not only for the gas but the state and Federal taxes that go with it. The title of the article was, "What Would You Drive if the Taxpayers Paid?" Apparently, members of the House Of Representatives are allowed to lease any car they want while in office and have the American taxpayer pay for the cost of the lease along with the gasoline that they use, a point brought up in the article, verifying the television report I referred to above.

As if this program of greed was not bad enough, you would hope that these United States leaders would at least be frugal in what they leased, would support domestic car manufacturers, and would be mileage conscious to minimize the impact on taxpayers. Not quite the case according to the article:

• Charles Rangel of New York leases a Cadillac for more than $777 a month (expensive and lousy mileage)
• Charlie Melancon of Louisiana leases a Chevy Tahoe (lousy mileage)
• Bobby Rush of Illinois leases a Lincoln Navigator (expensive and lousy mileage)
• Alcee Hastings of Florida leases an Infiniti M45 (foreign manufacturer and expensive)
• Maurice Hinchley of New York leases a BMW 530i (foreign manufacturer and expensive)
• Edolphus Towns of New York leases Lincoln MKX for $715 a month (expensive and lousy mileage)
• Gregory Meeks of New York leases a Leexus LS 460 for $998 a month (foreign manufacturer and way too expensive)
• Louise Slaughter of New York leases a Buick Lucerne for $808 a month (too expensive)

According to the article, not only do the taxpayers pay for the lease and gas but they also pay for maintenance, insurance, registration fees, and excess mileage charges. The article states that about 125 members of the House were using this program in mid-2008. If you take the monthly leasing costs of all examples mentioned in the article and multiply that average monthly lease cost by 125 participating House members, you get an annual taxpayer cost of about $1 million, just for the leases. Lord knows how high the costs go when you add in gas and these other perks of the program.

This is just one other example of this elitist mentality that has pervaded the American political class. It is not about solving the nation's problems, it is about taking care of themselves at taxpayers' expense. It is about getting themselves the good life while the nation and its citizens suffer. These are the same people whose $170,000 or so annual salaries put them in the top 5% of wage earners in this country, wage earners who have to pay for all of these car related expenses of their own household besides for these politicians' households. It is programs like this that Steps One and Two in the book would go after and thousands of other similar wasteful programs to get this country's debt levels and spending under control while not degrading the lives of ordinary Americans at all.

In closing, I loved the justification put forth by Congresswoman Slaughter whose lease runs taxpayers over $800 a month. She claims that she has a big district that requires her to drive around a lot in snow covered areas and the Buick along with its GPS system are necessary. However, what the Congresswoman does not mention is that US Senators do not have a similar program to this House giveaway program and seem to get by quite nicely despite having areas that are state wide and larger than Ms. Slaughter's district. These Senators seem to do quite nicely without a taxpayer perk, at least in this area. To them I say thank you.