Accounts Receivable

Technically speaking, congressional expense accounts are an open book. But it takes a truly constant reader to make any sense out of the volumes of expense vouchers since the vouchers are filed away with no index or key. Last week many a Congressman had the election-year jitters because two Washington newsmen, who spent months studying more than 25,000 vouchers turned in between 1957 and 1959, published (in LIFE and the Knight newspapers) the results of some patient indexing of their own.

Some Congressmen, reported Newsmen Walter Pincus and Don Oberdorfer, took wives along on business trips and in many cases absorbed the extra costs as legitimate expenses, while others apparently used flimsy excuses for making official trips, frequently paid for personal purchases out of their expense money, and did not always make proper reimbursements. Items:

P: Texas' Omar Burleson, an ex-FBI agent and chairman of the purse-string Committee on House Administration, bought $86.45 worth of doodads (pen set, calendar-pad holder, etc.) for his office in Abilene, charged it off to his committee, even though he had received a specific $1,200 allowance for office supplies. On another occasion, Burleson traveled 1,128 miles by car to investigate "election matters" in Texas (his own district included), charged the trip off at 10-c- a mile.

P: Fifteen Congressmen and two staff members of the House Public Works Committee stayed at a Manhattan hotel on a summer weekend to check up on "Long Island beach erosion." Several congressional wives accompanied them. A neat square of ink blotted out the "Mrs." on the hotel bills that were submitted for payment. Members of the same committee, accompanied by a few wives, appeared in Manhattan again to stay at the fashionable Plaza to "study" New York's harbor and thruway.

P: Florida's A. Sydney Herlong Jr. used part of his stationery fund to buy eight pieces of luggage for $204.80; Pennsylvania's George Rhodes bought seven umbrellas in a single day from the same fund; an unnamed Congressman bought $25 worth of yacht-club flags, and still another had an "original oil of a nude lady" framed.

P: An assortment of Congressmen and their wives visited Hawaii at various times for various investigative purposes. On one occasion, members of the Public Works Committee, who might have used the U.S. Military Air Transport Service for free transportation to the islands, traveled instead by luxury liner. At least one bill from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, made out to CONG & MRS., was overtyped in the records to read CONGRESSMAN.

Snorted one ranking Republican as the newsmen's story hit Capitol Hill: Voucher padding in Congress is no different from that done by "businessmen, publishers, LIFE reporters and photographers." Said another: "It used to be that a fellow used to take his secretary on trips and call her his wife. Now a guy takes his wife and calls her his secretary." But one Congressman was not laughing. To Speaker Sam Rayburn, 78, whose House is like a second home, the scandal was a direct reflection on the whole of Congress. Furious over the conduct of his members, Mr. Sam ordered an accounting.

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