While members of Congress are accepting fewer privately financed trips in the wake of a scandal over lobbyist-paid travel several years ago, lawmakers from Illinois are actively traveling overseas on taxpayer-funded official delegations.
Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), a senior congressman from a safe Downstate district, has spent at least 31 days — a full month — on taxpayer-funded overseas travel since the beginning of last year, according to disclosure reports reviewed by the Tribune.
A year ago this month, Costello and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) were on a 10-day globe-spanning tour, ferried by military aircraft to Greece, then on to Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan, all of it on the taxpayers’ tab and under the auspices of the House Transportation Committee.
In addition to the 10-day trip with Lipinski, Costello made an 11-day trip to Egypt, Ghana, South Africa and Morocco in January 2008, a four-day trip to El Salvador and Costa Rica in March 2008 and a six-day trip in January and February of this year to Brazil, Argentina and Panama. All were official delegations sponsored by the Transportation Committee, on which Costello is an influential member and aviation subcommittee chairman.
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Costello said in a written statement that he made the trips to study “how other countries are addressing their transportation needs.”
An analysis by The Wall Street Journal last month found the cost of government-funded congressional delegations has surged 70 percent since 2005, when a scandal erupted over lobbyist-paid junkets.
Some of the overseas trips can be grueling journeys to places such as the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. But other destinations seem more appealing.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) has traveled to Europe four times since the start of 2008, mostly for meetings of lawmakers from NATO nations.
“We need to represent ourselves to these other countries so international relationships are maintained,” said Shimkus spokesman Steve Tomaszewski, noting that the congressman is the ranking Republican on the U.S. delegation to the NATO parliamentary assembly.
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) spent four days in Cuba in April on what spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin called “a fact-finding mission looking at trade possibly helping to ease U.S.-Cuba relations.” Rush is an opponent of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
Rush is leading a congressional delegation on a nine-day tour of Africa later this month aimed at increasing U.S. trade there, Gadlin said.
Lipinski, who joined Costello on a January 2009 delegation to South America in addition to the August 2008 delegation, defended the value to taxpayers.
“Learning about these countries helps us make decisions about the United States’ relations with these countries,” Lipinski said. “… As a former [political science] professor, it’s especially interesting. I know the shortcomings of learning things only out of books.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has taken two overseas trips since January of 2008: a delegation to Haiti in December 2008 to examine water projects and the impact of AIDS and another in February 2009 to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey that focused on tensions among the three nations. Documents showed no overseas travel for Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.).
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