HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
PATRICK FARRELL/MIAMI HERALD/MCT VIA GETTY IMAGES
CAPITOL HILL
But Craig Holman, a lobbyist for
the watchdog group Public Citizen, says a loophole allows private
companies to set up nonprofit
fronts to pay for trips, and that
privately-funded travel is inching
its way back up.
Before the Abramoff scandal,
members of the 108th Congress
went on more than 9,000 voyages
worth $20 million over two years,
according to LegiStorm, a nonprofit that tracks congressional
disclosure forms.
Members of the current Congress—which still has several
months to go—have gone on 2,548
privately-sponsored trips so far,
collectively worth more than $8
million, compared with 2,540 trips
worth more than $7 million during
the 2009-2010 session.
TEA PARTY MOJO
Lavish gatherings of Washington’s
power elite were even more frequent in the 1980s—a period The
Washington Post’s Sally Quinn
recently described as a golden era
for dinner parties featuring “a
power-filled room of politicians,
diplomats, White House officials
and well-known journalists.”
Back then, members of Congress
made $89,500 a year (the median
household income was $24,879
at the time) and supplemented
their salaries by moonlighting as
speechmakers. The law let mem-
Washington
lobbyist
Jack Abramoff
arrives at
Miami Federal
Court in 2006
to plead guilty
to conspiracy
and wire
fraud charges.