Flying Away With the Public Trust : Make it illegal for any federal official to scrounge rides on company planes

When a White House aide strolls away from a corporate jet and says, “Thanks for the lift,” what are the odds that it ends there? Slim to none.

If time is money, a trip that bypasses ticket counters and luggage checks is worth a lot to a Cabinet officer, a senator or a member of the House of Representatives. Washington’s easy riders, such as White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), are not likely to forget the favor. If the company that flew government officials around then calls those same officials for help, what are the odds that the officials won’t listen attentively? Slim to none.

It may be that a government official who takes free trips would not help the company that asked for a return favor. The trouble is that Americans have no way of knowing whether the cozy relationship between federal frequent fliers is corrupt. Most will assume the worst.

Times writer Sara Fritz’s detailed account Monday of the pattern of winged corporate favors again makes it clear that Congress must choke off such hitchhiking for everyone in Washington and do so before its members fly home for the summer.

Dole’s case is instructive. Fritz reports that he uses corporate jets virtually every time he travels from the capital to Kansas, most of the time on planes owned by agribusiness firms. That would make it seem that Dole is too cozy with agriculture, but that comes with the territory in an agricultural state such as Kansas. It still doesn’t look good.

Congress has had more practice at free flights than the executive branch. Its addiction to having planes at the beck and call of members often can be traced directly to political campaigns, where helping a candidate race around to rallies has been going on for a long time. It also helps account for the fact that Congress has pretty much gone along with whatever pilots who fly for a hobby or for business want.

What is attracting so much attention is a 1989 change in the law that for the first time allows top executive branch officials to use private jets. The law even allows them to ride without paying the owner of the plane a nickel as long as the trip is not for political purposes.

President Bush, for reasons that he has not articulated, was the one who asked for the change in the law. Now that he can see what has come flying out of the Pandora’s box he helped open, the President should prod Congress to cut Washington’s losses on this bad idea and make it illegal for any federal official to scrounge rides on company planes.