Congress Wastes Your Money on Vacations

Remember how incensed the members of Congress were when the executives of the major auto companies took private jets to Washington to ask for a bail-out?

I'm sensing a double-standard.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Congress spent more than $13 million on travel abroad in 2008. That number doesn't even include the costs of travel within the U.S., since Congress does not have to report the amount of money spent on domestic trips.

Listen to this description of a recent trip taken by 12 Congressmen to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a NATO conference. If this is work, sign me up.

"Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel's fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms -- stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties -- cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.

While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the trip with a dinner at one of the region's finest restaurants, paid for by the legislators, who got $118 daily stipends for meals and incidentals.

Eleven of the 12 legislators then left the five-day conference two days early."

Oh, and its not only the 12 representative that were making the trip on our dime, it was their spouses, aides, and military liaisons, who "carry luggage, help them through customs, escort them on sightseeing trips, and stock their hotel rooms with food and liquor".

But they were there for a conference, so at least they spent some time working, right? Wrong.

"The first day there were meetings of the NATO organization's leadership. Half of the legislators, not being in the leadership, instead traveled with a group of spouses to Glasgow. There, according to a spokesman for one House member, they met with some Scottish officials.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D., N.Y.) attended the conference in Edinburgh on Friday but left at 4:30 p.m. and went to the spa. On Sunday, the third meeting day, she spent some time in the afternoon walking around Edinburgh and shopping at the House of Fraser, a department store....

...The group had a bus and a Mercedes minivan at their disposal for touring, shopping trips and transportation to dinners and the conference. The quoted rate for the two vehicles and their drivers is $2,500 a day....

...Early Monday morning, military escorts helped the 11 who were leaving early to check out, while hotel staff loaded a truck with luggage and shopping purchases. The hotel billed the delegation $200 for hauling suitcases and suit bags, seven brown boxes, a liquor box and a large white cooler."

Why stay an extra couple of days in Edinburgh when you've already finished all your shopping?

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