Congress Travels More, Taxpayers Pay

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Congress Travels More, Public Pays
Lawmakers Ramp Up Taxpayer-Financed Journeys; Five Days in Scotland


By BRODY MULLINS and T.W. FARNAM
EDINBURGH -- The expenses racked up by U.S. lawmakers traveling here for a conference last month included one for the "control room."

Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel's fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms -- stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties -- cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.

While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the trip with a dinner at one of the region's finest restaurants, paid for by the legislators, who got $118 daily stipends for meals and incidentals.

Eleven of the 12 legislators then left the five-day conference two days early.

The tour provides a glimpse of the mixture of business and pleasure involved in legislators' overseas trips, which are growing in number and mostly financed by the taxpayer. Lawmakers travel with military liaisons who carry luggage, help them through customs, escort them on sightseeing trips and stock their hotel rooms with food and liquor. Typically, spouses come along, flying free on jets operated by the Air Force. Legislative aides come too. On the ground, all travel in chauffeured vehicles.

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Rep. John Tanner led a trip to Edinburgh.
.The lawmakers were in Scotland to meet with foreign officials and attend a conference of U.S. and European legislators called the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. A spokesman for Tennessee Democratic Rep. John Tanner, the leader of the delegation of eight Democratic and four Republican House members, said the conference provided "the opportunity to learn first-hand the views and concerns that other countries have over the key security issues of the day."

Such gatherings also allow legislators to meet "members of parliaments who play important roles in their own countries in shaping the security agenda that their governments pursue at NATO," added Mr. Tanner's spokesman, Randy Ford. As for the three rented rooms not used for sleeping, these provided a "secure space for members to conduct meetings," he said.

Lawmakers take scores of overseas trips each year to visit military bases, meet foreign officials, attend conferences and see how U.S. funds are spent. Ever since a corruption scandal in 2005 led to restrictions on privately funded travel, legislators have been taking more trips paid for by the government.

The cost they reported for such travel abroad was $13 million in 2008, a 70% jump from 2005, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records. Lawmakers don't have to report the cost of domestic travel when the government pays. The $13 million didn't include the expense of flying on Air Force planes, which lawmakers don't have to disclose.

Over the 2005-08 period, the cost of legislators' privately funded travel, both domestic and overseas, fell 70%, to $2.9 million, according to LegiStorm.com, a Web site that tracks it.

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