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After sharp criticism, the House Ethics Committee reversed itself on changing how lawmakers publicly report trips financed by interest groups. Just two days after the change was first reported last week, the bipartisan panel decided House members would continue filing information about privately funded trips in their annual finance reports.
My fellow Think Tanker John Feehery wrote a post defending the change and, in the process, noted that lobbyists can’t pay for lawmakers’ trips.

But that distinction is splitting hairs. Nonprofit foundations associated with lobbyists do pay for lawmakers’ travel, and lobbyists can attend and have extensive access to lawmakers and staff members that they would not get in Washington.

For example, the American Israel Education Foundation, a pro-Israel nonprofit affiliated with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, frequently pays for trips for lawmakers and staff. The group has paid for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to visit Israel three times in the past five years.

These trips also skirt congressional rules on gifts. If members of Congress cannot accept gifts in Washington or in their districts, why is it okay for interest groups to pick up the tab for airfare, drinks, food and first-class hotels abroad?

What’s more, lawmakers’ political campaigns and PACs can hold destination fundraisers, with lobbyists flying officials on private planes to skiing in the Rocky Mountains, wine tasting in Napa or other high-end resorts and paying thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for the privilege.

Everybody is embarrassed about it,” a lobbyist told the New York Times early this year. “Although not so embarrassed that they don’t do it.”

All told, members of Congress and their staff took nearly 1,900 trips last year at a cost of more than $6 million, according to the nonprofit organization LegiStorm. Congressional hobnobbing on such trips with people who want something from them is just one of many reasons public respect for Congress has plummeted. Media and watchdog groups were right to point out that the change in disclosure rules would make it harder to track the funding of lawmakers’ trips. And the House Ethics Committee was right to forget about the change. Score one for public disclosure.




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