Lots of people like to travel ? or would like to, if they could afford it.
Members ofCongress don?t have to worry about the affording part. Other people pay for their trips.
Other people paid for $147,508 of Sen. Paul Sarbanes? 80 trips over a five-and-a-half-year period ending in 2005, reports the Center for Public Integrity. He and the rest of Congress earn $165,200 per year. He was one of 25 members of Congress who accepted more than $120,000 of travel for himself.
And other people paid $88,635 for Rep. Steny Hoyer?s 40 trips in the same time period. He ranked second behind Sarbanes for the Maryland Congressional delegation on the list of travel expenses.
Retiring Democrat Sarbanes is the senior member on the Foreign Relations Committee. He needs to know what?s going on in the world. So trips to Florence, Italy, Honolulu, Hawaii, and China to educate himself on issues pertinent to his congressional post don?t stink on face value. What does smell is the fact that most educational trips or travel to give speeches last a lot longer than the educational seminar or speech.
Members should pay for the lavish hotel accommodations, golf games and side trips that hosts tack on to trips. Even if the trips do not influence their policy making, they are not kings.
We elect them and we pay them four times as much as the average worker in Maryland. They can see the world on their own dime.
The bigger issue is that members of Congress hide their travel by describing it in vague terms, omitting names of sponsors and filing incomplete ethics disclosure forms. No one would know about Sarbanes? and other people?s travel unless the Center for Public Integrity, American Media and the journalism students at Northwestern University?s Medill News Service did not spend nine months analyzing the forms.
Banning travel is not necessary and would stop real fact-finding missions. But members of Congress must be honest. They must fully disclose who is paying, why and their itineraries ? and post them immediately online ? so that we the people can hold them accountable. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, suggests that Members should report on what the trip accomplished for taxpayers. We agree.
Members of the Maryland congressional delegation should set an example for Congress by posting their travel records on their official Web sites. They don?t need to wait for a rule change to force them. Do they?
