The practice of private advocacy groups funding travel for members of Congres is legal, unless there is an issue of bribary attached to it.  But the subjective nature of that makes any such travel open to scrutiny by ethics observers.  Indeed, in the wake of the Abramhoff scandals, any gift or hint of one is now fair game for speculation, and this includes travel.

So how do our local members of Congress rate when Congressional travel was examined? Not so hot. 

They apparently love to travel, especially when it’s on someone else’s dime.

98 trips by McDermott led way for the state

Lawmakers from Washington state — especially Rep. Jim McDermott — as well as their spouses and staff spend a lot of time in airplanes, and not just because their districts are a continent away from Capitol Hill.

A study released Monday by the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity found that Washington state lawmakers, their spouses and staff accepted 443 privately funded trips over the last 5 1/2 years to places as exotic as Casablanca, India, Paris and China and as mundane as Yakima, Kalispell, Mont., and the North Slope of Alaska.

The cost of those trips, according to the study, was $990,263.

The biggest traveler — by far — from Washington state was McDermott and his highflying staff, which accepted 98 trips over the period ending in 2005. The Seattle Democrat alone accounted for 41 trips, visiting such places as Baden Baden, Germany; Puerto Rico; Nigeria; India; Stockholm; Tokyo; China and Haiti.

On seven of the trips McDermott was accompanied by his wife, according to disclosure reports assembled by the Center for Public Integrity. On four other trips he took his son.

McDermott’s spokesman Mike DeCesare defended the travel, saying the knowledge gained from the trips is essential given Seattle’s international stature and McDermott’s deep involvement in such issues as AIDS prevention and combating global hunger. DeCesare added that decisions on whether — and where — to travel are carefully reviewed and considered.

"When you represent a city as international as ours is, you and your staff need to take trips to understand what it is you’re talking about," DeCesare said. "We take trips that related directly to our policy areas."

But as active as McDermott was during the period reviewed, he was not among the top tier of travelers. In 10 cases, all involving House members, a lawmaker and staff combined for more than 200 trips.

The nine-month investigation found that members of Congress and their aides took 23,000 trips underwritten by private groups such as corporations, advocacy organizations and trade associations. The total cost for those trips was at least $50 million, the center concluded.

For the study, researchers gathered information from 25,000 disclosure forms, which are required for lawmakers and staffs when taking trips. The investigation found that some members failed to fill out the forms properly but were allowed to file corrections years later.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Dave Reichert, a Republican from Seattle’s eastern suburbs, were among the more hesitant travelers. Cantwell took a single private trip, to Israel in 2002, and Reichert took two, to Baltimore and Florida. Both trips were last year, and both times he took his wife.

McDermott also claimed the most expensive trip of the Washington delegation when he and his wife went to India for six days in 2001, costing $17,736. Rep. Norm Dicks, a Bremerton Democrat, was a close second with a 10-day trip to China to take part in a conference on U.S.-Chinese relations. The $17,382 trip was underwritten by the Aspen Institute, a think tank that sponsored many of the trips. The third most expensive was a weeklong, $16,937 visit to Tokyo in 2003 by Rep. Brian Baird.

In addition to McDermott, the center found that Tacoma Democrat Rep. Adam Smith and his staff took 47 trips at a cost of $110,628; Dicks and his staff accepted 24 trips with a value of $80,945; and Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from north of Seattle, and his staff took 47 privately funded trips worth $73,599.

Washington’s two senators, Democrat Patty Murray and Cantwell, were relatively homebound. Murray and her staff took 15 trips at a cost of $32,873 while Cantwell and her staff claimed only seven trips with a total value of $16,231.

I suppose since they were privately funded we have no basis to whine, but still, one has to wonder why the trips were given, and whether there was a price paid for any of them.

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