House runs up $24 million in travel bills

Members of the House and their aides spent nearly $24 million of government money on foreign travel in the last 11 years, according to figures released Friday by PoliticalMoneyLine, an organization that tracks campaign finance and congressional activity.

During those 11 years, 568 of the lawmakers took 4,691 trips to 219 countries, at a cost of $8,895,406, while aides went on 5,539 trips, at a cost of $15,089,617, the figures show. The data were drawn from the House clerk's routine reporting of official foreign travel from 1994 through 2004.

Craig Holman, campaign finance lobbyist for the government watchdog Public Citizen, said he was surprised by the amount of official travel, particularly at how frequently staff members went abroad.

Still, the amount spent per lawmaker came to just $1,424 a year, and even that figure was skewed upward because of much larger sums spent by some members.

And Holman declared: "If members of Congress feel the need to travel for educational purposes, then it should be paid for by the taxpayers and carefully reviewed by the ethics committee. When special interests foot the bill, they want something out of it."

In fact, the figures are being released at a time of heightened scrutiny of travel by members of Congress and their aides. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the majority leader, has been at the center of controversy as to whether he and other members, Republicans and Democrats alike, improperly accepted foreign trips from lobbyists and registered foreign agents, in violation of House rules.

A coalition of watchdogs, including Public Citizen, Common Cause and Judicial Watch, have called for an ethics investigation into the travel, which included trips to a golf resort in Scotland.

The data released on Friday, however, deal with other, official trips, those that the government pays for.

DeLay took one such trip during the years studied. In July and August 2003, he spent 10 days in Israel, Iraq and Italy, at a cost of $2,816.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert ranked second among all members in the number of foreign trips, with 66, trailing only Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb. Hastert visited countries in Western Europe most frequently, but also went to Africa, Bosnia, Australia, Jordan and China. He spent about $55,000.

Bereuter, the most active traveler during the years examined, took 78 trips to dozens of countries. He also spent the most money, $163,994.

Bereuter, who retired from Congress this year after 26 years in the House, was the vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a senior member of the International Relations Committee.

He is now the president of the Asia Foundation, which promotes institutional and policy exchanges between Asia and the United States.

Source: JOHN FILES: New York Times News Service