The Gravy Train Never Stops

By MARGARET CARLSON

What Mike Espy, the former cabinet secretary, did is just awful, members of Congress will be the first to tell you. But what gets a Cabinet officer like Espy indicted (about $35,000 worth of tickets and favors from the likes of chicken czar Don Tyson) turns out to be perfectly legal for the lawmakers clamoring for his head. So many members find their way to the Super Bowl each year that they almost have a quorum in the stadium. Last month, Speaker Newt Gingrich flew to London first class with his wife ($20,268), staying at Claridge's ($12,225) and eating well (close to $700). Atlantic Richfield--the oil company with dreams of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--paid for everything. "Every American," Gingrich said, "should make this trip."

Indeed. But most of us are about $33,000 short.

In 1995 Congress tightened up on most giftgiving. But the legislators left a loophole you could fly a Concorde through: outsiders can pick up the tab for trips connected with "official" duties. And so many official duties need doing in places we all want to be in. And, ooh, the facts that need finding. An electric-power association believed the best way to inform members of Congress about utility rates was to send a dozen of them, with staff, floating through the Grand Canyon, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Utah Senator Bob Bennett and his staff logged $39,684 in paid travel including a trip for him and his wife to study international trade at Elbow Beach, Bermuda, for $3,938.

Last February, Congress Watch documented a typical outing. The Tobacco Institute flew 11 members, including Republican House leaders Tom DeLay and John Boehner, to the Phoenician, a Scottsdale, Arizona resort, for a "legislative conference," complete with morning seminars on the harmlessness of nicotine and afternoons free for golf and spa treatments at the Centre for Well-Being, at a cost of $62,890. There's no linkage, of course, but five months later the Republican leadership slipped a $50 billion tax break for tobacco into the budget bill. (By contrast, Espy's Agriculture Department actually tightened poultry regulation.)

Gannett News found that five months after the Sugar Cane League took 37 congressional staff members to Florida, Congress voted to maintain sugar price supports. And now that 60 legislators and staff members have gone to the Northern Mariana Islands, known for cheap immigrant labor for the garment industry as well as white sandy beaches, we haven't heard much lately about applying labor laws to any sweatshops that this U.S. commonwealth might harbor.

Lawmakers were treated to $4.6 million worth of goodies in 1996, according to an Associated Press survey. But there must be a twinge of guilt, even among the bitterly partisan, as they sight-see in London or scuba dive in the Pacific or tee up next to someone who wants their vote. Espy, who may have learned about ethics when he was in Congress, readies for a trial that could send him to jail.

"Fore!"