They Love to Fly and It Shows:
The WSJ reports the cost of taxpayer funded trips by members of Congress has been increasing dramatically. Costs are up 50 percent since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007; up 70 percent since 2005, when a ban on lobbyist-funded travel was imposed, and have tripled since 2001.
I guess they should visit China, Japan and Europe, since that's where they already exist.
This is the most important part of this post. Even bills that seemingly only have language trying to "make the bad men do good" have regulatory costs, and Congress never seems to realize that. If lobbyists weren't paying for those trips, and there's no incentive to frugality on the taxpayer's dime, OF COURSE these costs were going to spiral out of control.
13 million here, 13 million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
With the billions (and trillions) that is being wasted elsewhere, I'll save my outrage over the millions for now.
I wouldn't care as much either, but for the fact that these are the same politicians who couldn't find enough microphones and fake-outrage over CEOs, who have real jobs and actual things to accomplish, flew on private jets to Congress's dog and pony show.
It's shocking, truly shocking, that members of Congress would travel to Iraq or Afghanistan to see for themselves what's happening -- and to think the taxpayers are on the hook for these war-zone junkets!
Why, we should go back to the good old days when the private sector paid for representatives' golf trips to Scotland.
"In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a day. Before landing in Kabul, the eight lawmakers and their entourage of spouses and aides spent eight days in Italy, spending $57,697 on hotels and meals."
Defend that, if you will.
Don't worry, I'm sure Mr. Adler can find a way to insinuate that the Democrats are responsible for that as well.
taxpayer funded trips have increased since lobbyist funded trips have been banned. shocking! if lawmakers are going to take trips regardless of who pays for them and you ban one group from paying for them it makes logical sense that another group will pay for it. adlers post is basically a logical fallacy designed to denigrate democrats...which is essentially what i've come to expect from volokh.com lately.
and i can speak from experience that it is a lot more expensive to travel now than it was in 2001...just as anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 10 years knows.
If this was really a business trip (as opposed to a taxpayer-funded vacation in Italy with a side trip to Afghanistan tacked on), there’s no reason why a legislator’s spouse should be travelling on the taxpayer’s dime. I work for a company that sometimes contracts with HCPs (health care professionals) to do work on our behalf and we have strict rules that prohibit us from ever picking up the cost of travel, lodging, or meals for a spouse or guest that they’re traveling with.
Especially not since according to the article most of these trips were on government jets.
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