Buffeted by public criticism of lobbyist-paid junkets, many of Illinois’ congressional representatives and their staffs have reduced their use of one of the great perks available to them: travel around the globe on the tab of private interest groups.
To be sure, plenty of the state’s members of Congress are still heading off to exotic locations at no cost to themselves. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and her husband, Robert Creamer, spent six days in January at the Four Seasons luxury resort in Punta Mita, Mexico, courtesy of the Aspen Institute. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) went to Las Vegas, paid for by a nuclear energy industry trade group.
And since last March, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) has taken eight trips funded by Hispanic groups and a labor union, including four to Puerto Rico, where he and his wife have family.
Still, a review of disclosure forms filed by Illinois’ members of Congress and their staffs suggests they have cut their privately paid travel by close to 20 percent. They took 132 privately paid trips in a recent 10-month period, after averaging 164 such trips in comparable previous periods.
Free trips provided to members of Congress and their staffs have been the focus of public attention since the corruption scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff erupted a year ago. Abramoff admitted in a guilty plea in January that he arranged lavish trips to win favors for his clients.
The controversy has thrown a harsh light on privately funded travel provided to members of Congress and spurred a rash of proposals on Capitol Hill to restrict it. A Republican-backed package would require congressional ethics committees to pre-approve trips, and sponsors would have to certify that trips are not orchestrated by lobbyists.
On Wednesday, House Republican leaders circulated a proposal to temporarily ban privately paid travel, until the ethics panels could set up a system to screen sponsors.
Senate Democrats would go further, permitting gifts of travel only from tax-exempt charities that certify they do not lobby Congress.
Still, many rank-and-file members of Congress have been resisting efforts to curtail their free travel, and the proposals face uncertain prospects, with one ethics package stalling in the Senate last week.
A review of disclosure forms shows that Illinois lawmakers took 36 privately paid trips during the 10-month period ending Jan. 31 and their staff took another 96–for a total of 132.
By contrast, they were averaging 164 trips every 10 months the last time the Tribune examined congressional travel, covering more than four years ending March 31, 2005. Members have 30 days to file disclosure forms after completing a trip, so any complete tally has to be at least a month out of date.
Many members of Congress already have reduced privately subsidized travel in response to public criticism, either by adopting formal policies or informally discouraging staff members from taking free trips that are not clearly work-related.
In January, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a leading spokesman for Democrats on ethics reform, adopted an office policy banning any privately paid travel. The same month, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) adopted the Democratic Party’s proposal as an office policy, limiting trips to those paid for by tax-exempt charities.
In the House, Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) in the fall decided against accepting gifts of free travel and Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) did the same in January. Like Durbin, Schakowsky said that in January her office began limiting trips to those paid by tax-exempt charities.
Scandal’s aftereffects
Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has not adopted an official policy, his office has consciously cut back on privately paid travel over the past year, said spokesman Ron Bonjean. “Until we have a new system in place, there won’t be a lot of travel,” Bonjean said.
Before the recent scandal, Hastert’s staff was among the most heavily traveled. Even members of his press office, which is generally not directly involved in crafting legislation, jetted off to such destinations as France, Japan, Scandinavia, Hong Kong and the tony beach town of Newport, R.I., on the tab of private interest groups.
But since last March, the speaker’s staff has taken only 15 trips, 11 of them for overnight bipartisan congressional leadership retreats in the Washington area. Hastert did not go on any of the privately funded trips, although he led several taxpayer-funded official congressional delegations and frequently travels at the expense of Republican campaign groups for political activities across the country.
Chicago’s Gutierrez made the most use of free travel with eight trips. Each of four visits to Puerto Rico was for a one-day appearance, but the congressman turned them into three- and four-day weekends to stay with his parents and visit family, he said.
The Service Employees International Union paid $777 to fly Gutierrez and his wife, Soraida, to San Juan for an appearance in April. Disclosure forms do not indicate his wife accompanied him on the other trips, which were paid for by Latino groups and cost between $304 and $384 each.
“Puerto Rico is a part of the life and fabric of my community,” said Gutierrez, whose West Side district has a large concentration of Hispanic ethnic groups, including Puerto Ricans. “Meeting with other Puerto Rican leaders is important.”
Gutierrez added that it only makes sense to visit relatives while there. And he said that because he always stays with family, he accepts reimbursement only for his airfare, not lodging or meals.
“My mom and my dad and my family are very important to me. And every chance I have to stay with them, I will,” he said.
Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) also has been a frequent traveler, taking six trips mostly paid for by civil rights groups and other progressive political organizations.
“People ask me every day to come and give speeches,” Davis said.
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Serious matters discussed
In many cases, members of Congress say, travel paid by private groups gives them a deeper understanding of the public policy issues before them. But they acknowledge that the accommodations can be posh.
Schakowsky cited her stay at a luxury Mexican resort at a cost of $7,045 to pay for travel by her and her husband. The conference, funded by the corporate-sponsored Aspen Institute, brought together members of both political parties for extended discussions with leading scholars on U.S. policy in Latin America, she said. She noted that because the Aspen Institute is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt charity, she plans to continue accepting invitations from the group.
“These are a respite and an opportunity to really work together,” she said. “There’s no question it’s a nice place. But it’s very important policy work. It’s serious.”
One side benefit, she said, was that she used the opportunity to personally lobby Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to press the cause of a dissident priest imprisoned in Haiti, Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste. Lugar later raised the issue with the U.S. ambassador to Haiti and the Roman Catholic priest was released.
Durbin participated in another Aspen Institute program, traveling with his wife, Loretta, to Dublin for five days in August to attend a seminar on U.S.-Russian relations. The cost was $7,911. He also accepted a trip to Toronto to deliver the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.
A spokesman for Costello said the Downstate congressman’s trip to Las Vegas was to visit the site of a proposed national nuclear waste dump at the nearby Yucca Mountain. Although the congressman spent two nights in Las Vegas, he spent most of the day at the site, said spokesman David Gillies.
“Illinois has the largest amount of nuclear waste to dispose of in the nation, and for that reason the trip was important,” Gillies said.
Several of the state’s congressional representatives and staff members also accepted privately paid travel either to China or Israel, two countries of key importance to U.S. foreign policy. Corporate-sponsored groups with an interest in promoting trade with China have been active in sponsoring trips there, and Jewish groups anxious to maintain strong U.S. ties to Israel regularly pay to fly over members of Congress and staff.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) took two free trips, one to each country.
“Largely, the view is to have less foreign travel. I’m not totally closed to foreign travel, but it has to be something big and important. And those two missions were,” Kirk said.
In some cases, congressional disclosure rules cover trips that members of Congress planned even before they were elected.
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), a former political scientist at the University of Tennessee, disclosed a trip to England paid for by an American studies program at Oxford University. The purpose, he said, was to attend an academic conference and present a research paper he had submitted before he was elected.
The topic was one that has a bit more practical importance now to him as a freshman congressman: a study of the two major American political parties’ use of a parliamentary maneuver to block legislation in the Senate.
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Congress examining travel paid for by others
Proposed legislation on both sides of the political aisle would curb privately funded travel–a perk legislators, including many in the Illinois delegation, have generally enjoyed.
PRIVATELY FUNDED TRIPS MADE BY ILLINOIS DELEGATION
April 1, 2005-Jan. 31, 2006
REPRESENTATIVE / MEMBER TRIPS / STAFF TRIPS /
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS
Mark Kirk (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 2
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $42,443.02
Ray LaHood (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 1
STAFF TRIPS 2
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $23,256.28
John Shimkus (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 7
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $22,222.13
Jesse Jackson (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 4
STAFF TRIPS 4
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $20,545.67
Dennis Hastert (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 15
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $19,629.10
Judy Biggert (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 1
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $17,091.02
Jerry Weller (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 1
STAFF TRIPS 4
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $14,650.84
Luis Gutierrez (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 8
STAFF TRIPS 4
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $14,403.11
Danny Davis (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 6
STAFF TRIPS 1
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $10,804.33
Melissa Bean (D)
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MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 6
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $10,753.47
Jerry Costello (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 1
STAFF TRIPS 5
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $9,960.02
Jan Schakowsky (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 3
STAFF TRIPS 2
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $9,646.80
Rahm Emanuel (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 4
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $7,695.22
Don Manzullo (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 8
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $7,560.25
Dan Lipinski (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 3
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $5,672.49
Henry Hyde (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 3
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $4,479.85
Bobby Rush (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 2
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $2,592.24
Tim Johnson (R)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 1
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $1,075.63
Lane Evans (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 1
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $132.79
SENATORS / MEMBER TRIPS / STAFF TRIPS / TOTAL COST OF TRIPS
Dick Durbin (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 2
STAFF TRIPS 11
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $25,541.19
Barack Obama (D)
MEMBER TRIPS 0
STAFF TRIPS 11
TOTAL COST OF TRIPS $8,039.04
Source: Tribune review of congressional travel disclosure documents
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