pension333: The Obama administration's non-existent limo shopping spree

Numbers show the government went on limo bender, but then axed over half its fleet the next year. So what really happened?

It's difficult to decide which is more troubling: the idea that the Obama administration may have gone on a limousine-purchasing binge, or the idea that officials may be incapable of telling a limousine from a shuttle bus.

According to new official figures, the federal government's limousine fleet was 62% smaller in 2011 than it was in 2010. That sounds great, for anyone concerned about budgetary bloat. The problem is that the actual number of vehicles is about the same; it's just that the criteria for what qualifies as a limo appear to have radically shifted.

The number of limousines owned by the government fell from 412 in 2010 to 158 in 2011, according to the annual fleet report released last month. On paper, it's a dramatic offloading of luxury rides.

But as the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reports, the double-digit fleet correction comes on the heels of an even larger swing (percentage-wise) in the opposite direction the previous year, when the government added 174 limos to its existing fleet of 238.

That big expansion of the limo fleet raised a lot of eyebrows, and drew accusations that the Obama team was wasting money and ruining its own populist message. Populists don't take limos.

The state department, which acquired the lion's share of the new rides in 2010, told CPI that the limousines were used to ferry "distinguished foreign visitors" and that many of the vehicles were armored for safety, for work in dangerous places.

But now the government has changed its explanation of why it apparently acquired so many new limos in 2009-2010 ? and the new explanation conveniently brings the limo count back to acceptable levels.

The count exploded, the General Services Administration explains, because agencies were incorrectly qualifying vehicles such as shuttle buses to be limos. Apparently the rash of inability to identify vehicles spiked just after the current president took office.

Helpfully, the GSA has issued new, extremely specific guidelines as to what a limo is. A limo, a new government-wide memo states, "is a vehicle with a lengthened wheelbase, generally driven by a dedicated driver", including "privacy panels" and stretching. "Vehicles, including shuttle buses, without the aforementioned characteristics should not be reported as limousines," the memo says.

Presto! The number of limos falls by 254. With nary a mention of cupholders.

Tom McCarthy

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/jun/18/limousines-shuttle-buses-government-report

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