Now that the national average price at the pump has soared above $4 a gallon, thousands of Americans each week are putting their gasoline-guzzling sports cars and SUVs up for sale and heading to the local dealership in search of something more fuel efficient to drive. And several dozen members of Congress will soon be doing likewise — not out of any pocketbook concern, but because of a law they wrote for themselves.

House members are permitted to spend part of their congressional office budgets on leasing cars for official use back home, and 124 of them do so. Five pay to lease more than one car, generally because they operate out of several congressional district offices.

But language inserted in last year’s energy policy law, at the behest of Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II, says members may be reimbursed only for leasing vehicles with relatively low levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Last month, the House’s chief administrative officer, Daniel P. Beard, announced that the EPA had produced a list of the cars that qualify and said the requirement would apply to all new or renewed car leases.

The result: Two-thirds of the cars at members’ disposal will have to be replaced when their leases are up, according to an examination of official disbursement reports for the first three months of this year. (The House documents reflect only cars leased with taxpayer money; many other lawmakers arrange for their campaigns to buy or lease the vehicles they drive back home.)

The EPA’s list, which it has kept for other reasons for several years, includes several hundred models with relatively low tailpipe and carbon dioxide emissions. Among the vehicles not making the cut: SUVs-a-plenty, such as the GMC Yukon that Republican Louie Gohmert uses to cruise the piney woods and cypress swamps of northeast Texas, and luxurious sedans, such as the cherished Cadillac DeVille that Democrat Charles B. Rangel drives around Harlem in New York.

The new requirement is going to cramp Republicans’ style a hair more: They’re currently leasing 51 percent of the cars that will be off-limits from now on. But the lawmaker whose automotive lifestyle will change most is a Democrat, John Salazar of Colorado. He’s the only lawmaker leasing three vehicles — one for each of his field offices in Durango, Grand Junction and Pueblo — and all three of the Ford Explorers will have to be replaced. But a pair of Republicans will have to give up two vehicles each: Dan Burtonof Indiana rides in a Cadillac DeVille and Dodge Grand Caravan, and Mike Simpson of Idaho has a Jeep Liberty and Jeep Cherokee.

Of the 40 Toyota Priuses, Ford Escapes, Honda Civics and the like that still qualify for congressional reimbursement, 70 percent belong to Democrats.

Cleaver's spokesman, Danny Rotert, says his boss is bracing for an onslaught of quips and quibbles from colleagues in search of new rides. But at least they can't say he's not bearing the brunt of the new rules: Cleaver's souped-up 1998 Ford Econoline van — which he uses as an office-on-wheels in Kansas City and has outfitted to run on vegetable oil — didn't make the list. Rotert says the congressman is planning to ask the EPA for an exemption.