Thread: Members of Congress get rich on travel through huge per diem

Members of Congress get rich on travel through huge per diems

posted at 10:11 am on August 12, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

After getting a hailstorm of criticism for its plans to buy more private jets for its own members, Congress has moved to dump the new Gulfstream orders it included in the 2010 budget bill. However, as John Fund reports for the Wall Street Journal, that actually was the milder travel scandal to come out of this session. Travel junkets have become wildly popular with members of Congress not just for the lure of travel, but because taxpayers provide these politicians with hefty per diems while traveling. Some lawmakers can pocket up to $3,000 a trip in cash, thanks to a system that doesn’t require itemization and rarely demands refunds of unused cash:

The total cost for congressional overseas travel is never made public because the price tag for State Department advance teams and military planes used by lawmakers are folded into much larger budgets. Members of Congress must only report the total per diem reimbursements they receive in cash for hotels, meals and local transport.

They don’t have to itemize expenses—a convenient arrangement since most costs are covered by the government or local hosts. Some trips subtract some hotel and meal costs from the per diems, others do not. “The policy is completely inconsistent,â€

Good post!