Despite Ethics Rules, Congress' Travel Junkets Creep Back Up

Nov. 5, 2011 -- Four years after Congress imposed new restrictions on travel funded by outside groups, federal lawmakers are frequent fliers again, taking 415 privately funded trips between between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 — a nearly 75 percent jump in the number of trips they took during the same period in 2010, records show.

The value of the trips exceeds $3.1 million, making it the most expensive year of travel since Congress enacted ethics rules in 2007 aimed at clamping down on lobbyist-funded trips, according to a USA TODAY review of congressional travel records compiled by the non-partisan CQ MoneyLine.

Big-ticket items include travel by more than 80 lawmakers to Israel, much of it courtesy of the American Israel Education Foundation, a charity affiliated with the influential pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Political Affairs Committee. The average cost: $18,120.

In August, four lawmakers took a 10-day excursion to South Africa and Botswana, funded by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, a charitable group with ties to several environmental groups.

Accommodations included two nights at South Africa's Shamwari Game Reserve, described on its website as the "pinnacle of private game reserves," with the chance to view elephants, lions and other wildlife during game drives through its nearly 61,800-acre property. Three of the lawmakers took their wives along.

Ethics rules approved four years ago bar lawmakers from taking trips longer than two nights at the expense of corporations, unions and others that employ lobbyists. The changes were prompted by the lobbyist Jack Abramoff's 2006 admission that he provided gifts and luxury trips to lawmakers and other government officials in exchange for official favors. However, the House and Senate imposed few limits on travel funded by non-profits, which now are funding dozens of lawmaker trips each month.

"These are the travel junkets of yore," said Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, which lobbied for the 2007 travel restrictions. "It's a recurring situation. You get some good reforms on the books, and after a few years, people start trying to get around them."

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., has the biggest travel tab so far this year for any lawmakers, more than $47,000, according to MoneyLine's data. It includes three trips sponsored by the non-profit Aspen Institute to San Juan, P.R., Barcelona, Spain, and Banff, Canada. Topics included energy-security issues and "policy challenges in the Muslim world."

"The meetings were not at taxpayer expense," Cooper said in a statement. "They were working meetings about issues important to the nation."

The price tag on the South Africa and Bostwana trips ran as high as $30,000, records show.

The travel to southern Africa gave Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., the chance to learn more about the economic, political and heath conditions of the countries, along with conservation programs to help "future decision making on Capitol Hill," Crenshaw's spokeswoman, Barbara Riley, said in a statement.

Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, "is interested in conservation" and the trip allowed him to see "actual efforts in the field" to protect wildlife and natural resources, his spokesman John Stone said.