House Members Detail Travel Paid for by Firms, Groups

Senior House committee Republicans and Democrats frequently travel at the expense of companies and associations in the industries they oversee, according to financial records released yesterday.

The trips are legal, as long as they are paid for by businesses and not by registered lobbyists. But the sheer volume of them -- along with the alluring destinations, not notably related to the business at hand -- could add impetus to calls for greater restrictions when the House ethics committee carries out a directive issued by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) last month to "look at the whole travel issue."

Hastert's call for the ethics committee to provide members with clearer guidelines followed a spate of news reports about trips that lawmakers had taken in the company of lobbyists, often with a nonprofit group listed as paying the tab.

The reports showed that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) owed a total of between $125,000 and $315,000 to three law firms, and collected $439,300 for his legal defense fund last year. He reported a trip to Palm Springs, Calif., at the expense of the Barbara Sinatra Children's Center, and a trip to Miami at the expense of the DeLay Foundation for Kids.

The committee leaders' travel was reported in annual financial disclosure forms released yesterday, offering a comprehensive look at travel by members.

Consider the case of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who in late February 2004 became chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the most powerful and wide-ranging panels. Three weeks later, Barton was in Boca Raton, Fla., for the annual conference of the Futures Industry Association. The $1,823 tab for flights and his hotel room was paid for by the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The next month, he and his wife, Terri, were off to Las Vegas for four days to attend a National Association of Broadcasters convention, with the industry group picking up the $4,984 cost.

Other industry-funded trips that year took him to Aventura, Fla., and Palm Springs. Among the sponsors of other Barton trips last year were the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said the Barton trips paid for by trade groups seeking to influence government policy "illustrate why it is simply not enough to prohibit lobbyists from financing travel and lodging for members of Congress." He added: "It is incumbent on the House to take action in this Congress to strengthen its ethics rules governing the financing of trips."

Brooks Landgraf, Barton's press secretary, said the chairman "embraces opportunities to discuss emerging innovations and the changing dynamics of trade and commerce by meeting with industry experts [out] in the field."

"It is impossible to legislate in a vacuum, and Congressman Barton understands his duty as a lawmaker to search outside the Beltway for solutions in forming sound public policy," Landgraf said. "He's learning about these issues from both sides. He also meets with groups who are on opposing sides of the same issue. It all balances out."

The top Democrats on the committees also took trips sponsored by organizations with business before them. Rep. James L. Oberstar (Minn.), the ranking Democrat on the Transportation Committee, took four trips paid for by such groups.