Travel by Congress often paid privately (USA Today whitewash)

[Mithras61]

Travel by Congress often paid privately

By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

<snip>
The issue of who pays for lawmakers' travel is under increased scrutiny because of an ethics controversy involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who took trips that may have been paid for by prohibited sources. Privately paid travel is permitted under the rules, but expenses cannot be paid for by a lobbyist or by a representative of a foreign interest.


The new analysis of 5,410 trips in the past five years by about 600 members of the House and Senate was conducted by PoliticalMoneyLine, an online service that provides campaign-finance and lobbying data.


It found that $8.8 million of the travel expenses were paid for by tax-exempt and other groups whose funding sources aren't public. DeLay is under fire in part because one such group, the National Center for Public Policy Research, paid for a trip to Britain in 2000 that may have been at least partly paid for by a lobbyist, which is against House rules. <snip>
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=1&u=/usatoday/20050426/ts_usatoday/travelbycongressoftenpaidprivately">--more--

My emphasis...

Just working hard to cover Bugman's butt. We all know it's really Abramoff that paid for it all, and that's what the Bugman's under fire for...