Congressmen and Staff Take $57 Million in Trips Paid by Private Interests, Says LegiStorm

LegiStorm has released a new, free, searchable web database revealing more than 27,000 trips costing $57 million that members of Congress and their staff have taken courtesy of private interests since Jan. 1, 2000. With user-friendly icons, the newly designed site at http://www.legistorm.com identifies trips to tropical paradises, golf and ski resorts, cultural meccas, and even hellholes. The LegiStorm site correlates trips with special events that may have attracted the attention of lucky travelers, whether the Wimbledon tennis tournament or the Paris Air Show.

Washington, DC (IssuesWire) July 10, 2007 -- It's not as much fun working for Congress these days.

Every January for the past few years, dozens of congressional staff and their elected bosses have flocked to Las Vegas to gamble, eat gourmet meals, take in shows and attend the glitzy Consumer Electronics Show filled with high-tech wizardry. All costs but the poker chips were picked up by private business interests.

Not this year. Only eight congressional travelers reported attending, down starkly from the 66 - a more typical number - who went last year.

These and many other details are available in a new, free, searchable web database produced by LegiStorm revealing more than 27,000 trips costing $57 million that members of Congress and their staff have taken courtesy of private interests since Jan. 1, 2000.

LegiStorm reveals the most-traveled members of Congress, most-active sponsors of congressional travel, most-expensive trips and most popular destinations. The site identifies trips to tropical paradises, golf and ski resorts, cultural meccas, even hellholes. The LegiStorm site correlates trips with special events that may have attracted the attention of lucky travelers, whether Wimbledon or the Paris Air Show.

LegiStorm's database reveals 57 congressional travelers received privately sponsored trips to pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans in one week alone during the revelry of the city's popular 2005 Jazz & Heritage Festival. Only 26 have managed to make the trip at private expense in the nearly two years since Katrina despite Congress having spent tens of billions of dollars for relief efforts.

The cash-strapped City of New Orleans paid for one of those few post-Hurricane New Orleans trips so Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) could give the introductory speech for Mayor Ray Nagin at his inauguration. The $2,167 bill for the one-day trip included $433 for lodging, ranking it as one of the top 3% priciest per-night hotel tabs in the database.

The trips are of all manner. One congressman, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) visited a convicted spy in prison; another, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), did not worry about symbolism when he visited Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime or when he attended an anti-war rally held by a band doing business as Anti-Flag.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) got her local airport to pay for her to "tour the airport baggage hold security system". She did that tour in London and Amsterdam over 5 days. She also had the same airport sponsor a "trade mission to develop business opportunities" in the Bahamas.

Travelers gave varying official reasons for travels on cruise lines, such as to study "ADA accommodations", referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act, or to "observe port and ship security procedures, including embarkation and disembarkation."

It took three staffers from now-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) staff to travel to Cleveland, Ohio to learn about the federal appropriations requests by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, listed "fact-finding" as the purpose of a $20,800 5-night trip he took to London with his wife. Such lack of detail is emblematic of thousands of trips in the database.

Even before ethics rules tightened this year, they required that privately financed travel be "officially connected."

At times, despite ethics rules, members of Congress and their staff have still taken trips whose sole purpose was to go marlin fishing, in the case of a former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) staffer; or golfing, including Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut senator and Democratic presidential candidate, and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Only four privately funded trips were to post-war Iraq; three were to Afghanistan. Far more were to casino towns for travelers specifically to study gaming. Hundreds were to Caribbean islands. Literally thousands of trips were to nationally or internationally renowned golf resorts or within short driving distance of one.

Privately funded trips in dramatic decline. Spending travel through the first four months of this year was $1,092,888 compared to $5,307,505 in the comparable post-election period of 2005, a nearly 80% decline.

The drop-off in travel comes as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and others take their toll. FBI and other federal agents have investigated numerous congressional trips. Some have led to indictments and convictions.

Democrats and Republicans show sharp splits in travel patterns. Democrats are the biggest travelers, while Republicans were bigger spenders.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) disclosed more trips than anyone else - 84 since January 2000 for a total of $100,000. Of the top 20 congressional travelers, 19 were Democrats, including presidential contenders Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). The only Republican who made the list, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), did so simply by publicly disclosing far more travel than was legally required.

Frank may have traveled more than three times as often as Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), but Sensenbrenner's trips cost more than twice as much in all, totaling $220,000 for his 25 trips. Retired Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Va.) maintains the record for the most expensive trip, $31,000 to London paid by tobacco interests. Some 13 of the top 20 most-expensive trips were taken by Republicans.

A handful of trips in the database were little more than a short bus ride. But two dozen trips involve self-disclosed lodging bills of more than $1000 per night. The top self-disclosed spender was an aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who claimed to rack up more than $16,000 in hotel bills in a week. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Tom Tancredo and John McCain all managed to spend more than $1000 per night on hotels on at least one trip.

LegiStorm, LLC is a private, non-partisan Internet company that aims to make congressional information better available via the web. LegiStorm launched in September 2006 with the first-ever database of congressional staff salaries, which is used heavily by journalists, bloggers, lobbyists and congressional staffers. The San Francisco Chronicle called the site "an overnight sensation."

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