The General Services Administration headquarters  (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Used-car salesmen have a stereotype, valid or not, for being shifty, sleazy types exploiting a don’t-tell approach to problems with their goods.

You wouldn’t expect to find Uncle Sam in that lot.

But a letter from members of Congress, expressing their “profound disappointment” with the General Services Administration (GSA), indicates that’s the crowd Sam the salesman frequents.

GSA is in charge of government buildings and vehicles, including cars and trucks that at some point outlive their usefulness. But when Sam sells a used vehicle, the GSA does not let customers know if the car or truck is subject to a safety recall, according to the representatives.

“As an arm of the federal government, your agency has the responsibility to look out for the well-being of Americans,” said the letter led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). “Leasing and auctioning vehicles with open safety recalls is inconsistent with that responsibility. We urge you to take immediate action to reduce the number of vehicles in the federal fleet with open recalls and to only auction vehicles once safety issues have been resolved.”

Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), G. K. Butterfield (N.C.) and Lois Capps (Calif.) also signed the letter, which cited a report by Circa, a digital news service. That report said more than 20 percent of the GSA cars available for auction in August had open recalls.

A separate bipartisan letter from leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its subcommittee on government operations requested GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth  provide a series of documents related to federal vehicles and safety recalls by Nov. 3.

“First, we believe that no federal employees should be driving vehicles that are subject to recalls that could place employees or others at risk,” said the letter signed by Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Gerald Connolly (D-Va.).

“Second,” their letter continued, “we believe no federal vehicles should be sold or auctioned to the public without clearly disclosing whether they are subject to open safety recalls.”

A GSA spokesperson told The Washington Post that in fiscal 2016 “GSA sold 37,486 vehicles, 98 percent of those sold vehicles did not have any open safety recalls that were actionable.”