Flying high

Well, it’s fairly obvious that the soft economy hasn’t put a crimp in our U.S. senators’ globetrotting ways. In fact, they seem to be on a record-setting pace when it comes to the cost of their foreign travel.

Roll Call, the newspaper devoted entirely to coverage of Capitol Hill affairs, examined travel disclosures published in the Congressional Record and discovered that, in the first six months of 2010, $2.6 million was spent to cover the costs of overseas travel for senators and their staff.

That’s up by about a half million bucks over last year during the same period and puts spending on a pace to top $5 million annually for the first time.

For the sake of comparison, Roll Call pointed out that the Congressional Research Service recently tallied foreign travel expenditure reports and concluded that the cost of these trips has more than tripled since 1994. That year, the Senate reported spending $1.3 million on foreign travel; in 2002 that total had risen to $2.6 million, and in 2008 the Senate reported spending $4.9 million, according to the CRS. Last year the total dropped to $4.4 million.

OK, in the senators’ defense, in Washington bucks $5 million doesn’t sound like that much. We’re used to hearing about billions of dollars being thrown around.

But in spirit of current times, and considering how many of their constituents are hurting financially as a result of the recession, you might expect the senators to be a little more frugal.

And it should be pointed out that members of Congress have a real cushy deal going when it comes to travel arrangements. Congressional foreign travel is paid for out of two standing foreign currency accounts in the U.S. Treasury that automatically refill themselves, so Congress does not have to appropriate money for these trips. There also is no budget for congressional travel, so members of Congress never have to inquire how much money is left for travel in a given year. 

What’s more, the $5 million figure that senators appear intent on topping this year isn’t really a true indication of the taxpayer money being spent on foreign travel.

For instance, the figures in Congressional Record reports don’t include millions of dollars of expenses that the State Department charges to its foreign currency accounts in support of congressional trips. 

For instance, Senate reports have disclosed about $27.7 million in travel costs since 2001. But Treasury Department reports indicate that the actual total for that period is about $36.8 million. 

What’s more, these numbers also do not reflect the tens of millions of dollars spent by the Pentagon providing the aircraft for the lion’s share of congressional trips and other expenses, which come out of agency budgets to support members traveling abroad. 

And yet another factor must be considered. Congressional travel totals include very few entries for trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, because almost all of the congressional travel in war zones is controlled and paid for by the military.

As a result, it’s almost impossible to account for just how much money is being spent on congressional overseas travel because it comes out of so many different pockets.

Our lone consolation? At least when they’re on the road, our lawmakers seem to be spending at a slower pace than when they’re doing business as usual back at the Capitol.