Foreign Travel at Taxpayer Expense Cut by More Than a Third in 1992

The gridlocked House of Representatives was more landlocked than usual in 1992, as members sharply cut back their foreign travel in an election year teeming with voter unrest over Capitol Hill and Capital Beltway lifestyles.

Roll Call Report Syndicate’s annual survey of official travel overseas by House members found that the number of trips declined by more than one-third compared with levels of preceding years.

The travel consists mainly of fact-finding committee trips or special jaunts authorized by Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.). It is funded by taxpayers through an array of legislative and executive branch accounts.

The survey of public records identified 134 House members traveling overseas during the year, a decline of 34% from the 204 members who took official trips abroad in 1991. They took 216 individual trips (down 39% from 1991) over 1,386 days (down 40%) to 460 destinations, including duplications (down 53%).

Travel in 1992 took an even sharper drop when compared with levels as far back as 1989, when Roll Call Report Syndicate began its survey. Travel figures for 1993 are not yet available.

“I think that members have gotten gun-shy about travel in general because the public doesn’t like it,” said Joan Claybrook, president of the Ralph Nader group Public Citizen.

“There’s been a lot of negative press,” said Armed Services Committee staffer Peter Steffes, “and I would say that maybe 10% of everything that’s been reported is probably worthy of being reported. No matter how well intentioned the travel is or how much is done for their constituents or the Congress, that never seems to come out. Members are saying it’s just not worth it anymore.”

However, 1992 produced several frequent flyers, most notably Democrat Jim McDermott of Washington. The three-term legislator from Seattle took five trips over 63 days to 20 countries to become the reigning king of House travel.

McDermott, a doctor, undertook all of his travel as head of a task force monitoring the international spread of AIDS, his office said.

The top 1991 traveler, California Democrat Mervyn Dymally, tried hard to keep his crown. Dymally registered the same number of trips (5) and countries (20) as McDermott in 1992, but was away from the United States 44 days compared to McDermott’s 63.

Ranking third was Democrat Edward Feighan of Ohio with five trips over 29 days to six countries. Both Dymally, of Compton, and Feighan, of Cleveland, voluntarily left Congress in 1992.

Other top 1992 travelers--those with at least four jaunts--were Republican John Hammerschmidt of Arkansas (four trips, 38 days, 12 countries), Republican John Miller of Washington (four trips, 29 days, seven countries) and Democrat Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey (four trips, 20 days, nine countries).

Legendary globe-trotter Stephen Solarz, a New York Democrat, took only one trip over 13 days to nine countries in 1992, after taking 16 trips over 166 days to 73 countries between 1989 an 1991. Solarz lost a tough reelection campaign last year.

Representatives from the Southeast and Long Beach areas or nearby who were listed in the travel survey were Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente), one trip of eight days to two countries, and Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), three trips over 12 days to three countries.

Those with zeros in the travel column were Glenn M. Anderson (D-Harbor City), William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park), Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Aneles) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach). Anderson, Dannemeyer and Roybal are no longer in office.

Current Reps. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton) were not in office in 1992.

Senate travel, which is reported to the public only in sparse detail, was not covered by the survey.

The image of congressional travel appears to be still reeling from a 1990 expose by ABC’s “Prime Time Live” that gave a nationwide television audience its first detailed look at members of Congress at play on foreign soil. Hidden ABC cameras at a Barbados resort recorded several lawmakers consorting with and accepting freebies from Washington lobbyists. The lawmakers were on the final leg of a Ways and Means Committee trip.

Despite such hijinks, congressional travel overseas is seen by many as necessary to give lawmakers the firsthand knowledge and world perspective they need to do their jobs.

“Any Foreign Affairs Committee member that does not travel abroad is incapable of fulfilling their oversight responsibilities and should not be a member of the panel,” said Torricelli, who chairs the panel’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee.

“There is every reason in the world why the United States government should have some travel to Japan,” said Jeff Biggs, the spokesman for Foley. “That sort of face-to-face contact gives you something you don’t get out of a textbook.”

Claybrook said Public Citizen feels “that government-sponsored travel is not necessarily inappropriate. It depends on what it is for. And if it is fully reported, and not using military aircraft when that is not necessary . . . and the trip has a functional purpose and there is a report prepared by the member on what they do, then I think that that’s extremely appropriate.”

Her group reserves its wrath for the far more numerous corporate-sponsored trips by which House members and senators flock to vacation spots to spend time with lobbyists who pick up the bill.

The cost of House members’ travel is difficult to measure because the departments of State and Defense, which pay most of the tab, do not provide a line-item public disclosure of their funding. There is no evidence that either department isolates and tallies what is spent on congressional travel.

A limited public disclosure is contained in the trip listings that committees and other sponsors are required by law to publish in the Congressional Record. These show a trip’s per diem expense allowances and approximate transportation costs. For 1992 House travel, the total is $4.5 million. That figure, which reflects staff as well as member travel, is down from $4.6 million in 1991.