$50 million in freebie travel trips to Congress

Privately Sponsored Trips Hot Tickets on Capitol Hill


$50 million in freebie travel trips to Congress

Study finds almost $50 million spent on travel




Over a 5½-year period ending in 2005, members of
Congress and their aides took at least 23,000 trips
valued at almost $50 million financed by private sponsors,
many of them corporations, trade associations and
nonprofit groups with business on Capitol Hill.


Who are the top travelers?
While some of these trips might qualify as legitimate
fact-finding missions, the purpose of others is less clear.

A nine-month analysis of congressional disclosure forms
for travel from January 2000 through June 2005 done by
the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media
and Northwestern University's Medill News Service
turned up thousands of costly excursions
at least 200 trips to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy.

Congressional travelers gave speeches in Scotland,
attended meetings in Australia and toured nuclear
facilities in Spain. They pondered welfare reform
in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the future of Social Security
at a Colorado ski resort, according to the forms.

Some trips seem to have been little more than pricey
vacations often taken in the company of spouses or
other relatives wrapped around speeches or seminars.

In many instances, trip sponsors appeared to be buying
access to elected officials or their advisers. Some
such as the Nuclear Energy Institute, Microsoft,
Time Warner and The Walt Disney Co. clearly have
products to sell or programs to promote.
The motives of others the Congressional
Institute or the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, for example are less obvious.

Congressional
Fact-Finding Missions?

Congressional ethics rules permit lawmakers and aides to take privately sponsored travel in connection with their official duties, but state that trips shouldn't be "substantially recreational in nature." Yet thousands of them approved in recent years have been to such prime vacation spots as Paris, Rome and the Colorado Rockies.

Source: U.S. House and Senate travel disclosure forms
The analysis found many apparent violations of ethics rules. Disclosure forms show, for example, that at least 90 trips, valued at about $145,000, were sponsored or co-sponsored by firms registered to lobby the federal government. Ethics rules do not allow lobbyists to pay for congressional travel.


http://www.publicintegrity.org/powertrips/report.aspx?aid=799