Hill Leaders Often Take Corporate Jets

Statistics for political party campaign committees that support Senate candidates and pay for the use of corporate jets by senior lawmakers are not electronically available, so some flights are not counted here.

In each of the filings, lawmakers are required to disclose only that their campaign committees reimbursed the companies that provided the planes, and to show the dates and amounts of the checks. They do not have to say where they went, what they did, or explain their decision not to take a commercial flight.

Only two of the 12 current and former congressional leaders contacted by The Post -- Reid and Pelosi -- provided the information.

Reid's travel was mostly between Washington and his home state of Nevada or from one city to another in that state. His spokesman said he used the jets for such purposes as meeting with contributors, attending a funeral, presiding at a groundbreaking ceremony, or simply to go home.

Pelosi's spokeswoman said the sole corporate flight reimbursed by one of the lawmaker's campaign committees was aboard a plane owned by Ullico Inc., a union life insurance and investment planning company. It carried her from Hartford, Conn., to her home district of San Francisco on April 4, 2002.

Spokesmen for the other current or former leaders studied -- Blunt, former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), DeLay, Daschle, former Senate minority whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.), Frist, Hastert, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) -- either did not respond or declined to disclose details for all their flights or explain how they had been arranged. An aide to Gephardt said he no longer has the trip records.

Many of the companies involved similarly declined to provide any information about the flights. But FedEx, BellSouth Corp., and CBRL Inc., the holding company for Cracker Barrel stores, said House and Senate leaders had solicited the flights. They said they granted the requests in the expectation that doing so would either improve relations with the leaders or directly curry legislative favor.

BellSouth, which made its aircraft available to senior House and Senate members at least 31 times from 2001 to 2004, approves requests from "people who are friendly to us" and "important to us," spokesman Bill McCloskey said. "They could be in a position to help or hinder legislative action that might be beneficial" or damaging to the firm.

BellSouth, with 62,636 employees, is interested in many matters that come before Congress, including free trade issues, communications regulations and workplace rules. McCloskey said most of the lawmakers flew aboard one of the company's seven or 11-passenger Cessna Excel, Hawker and Falcon jets.

He said he was not aware of a single flight on which the company did not have a lobbyist. Most of the leaders flown by BellSouth were Republicans, and Blunt was aboard at least 10 of the flights, according to the company and The Post's tally.

FedEx, which used its fleet of six Learjets and Challengers to fly congressional leaders 21 times to their chosen destinations, considers the practice "part of the cost of doing business," spokeswoman Kristin Krause said. Lobbyists for the company use each flight as "an opportunity to meet members," she said. Political party committee records indicate the company flew unidentified senior Republicans 11 more times and Democrats once.

FedEx is interested in numerous customs, aircraft and regulatory issues, and Krause said the company is sometimes willing to fly one of its aircraft to Washington when someone from a lawmaker's staff "calls and asks."