Lawmakers took millions in free trips, study finds

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

Members of Congress and their aides took free trips worth nearly $50 million paid for by corporations, trade associations and other private groups between January 2000 and June 2005, according to a study released today.

Some of the 23,000 trips featured $500-a-night hotel rooms, $25,000 corporate jet rides and visits to popular spots such as Paris, Hawaii and Colorado ski resorts, said the study, by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service.

And

"In many instances, trip sponsors appeared to be buying access to elected officials or their advisers," the study said.

While some excursions were legitimate fact-finding missions, others appeared to have been little more than "pricey vacations" wrapped around speeches or seminars in which the lawmaker was joined by family members, the study said.

The data emerged from a nine-month-long review of congressional travel disclosure forms and coincided with ongoing federal investigations of political corruption and efforts to clean up how Congress does business.

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How corrupt is the Republican dominated Congress? Pretty damned corrupt according to this study. And this area of legal bribery is strictly small change when compared to the cash bonanza flowing out of corporate America for campaign finance. Nonetheless, it still stinks. Congressional Republicans defend these trips as, the article observes, "legitimate fact-finding missions." I can imagine a few circumstances where getting a feel for what's happening on the ground would be helpful in drafting legislation, but not many. Why, for instance, would a Congressman need to go skiing at lobbyists' expense? In short, this is a bunch of crap. Most of these trips are utterly unnecessary and are therefore bribery; Congressmen have their own substantial library as well as access to the internet like you and me. Really, when you get right down to it, there is no need for lobbyists, either, whose function is also defended by Congress as informational in nature: Congress should do its own research and completely ban all lobbying. There's just too much potential for abuse.

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