U.S. taxpayers pay heavily for lawmakers' global trips: data

U.S. Congress spent at least 14.7 million dollars on taxpayer-funded trips in fiscal year 2016, a 24 percent jump over the year before, according to Congress' own accounting released on Monday.

U.S. taxpayers paid for 557 trips that each costs more than 10,000 dollars for a member of Congress or a staffer, the data show. These trips made up 40 percent of all individual congressional trips for which travel costs were publicly reported.

By comparison, less than 0.2 percent of air tickets bought by Americans through U.S. travel agencies in 2015 and 2016 were more than 10,000 dollars, according to the Airlines Reporting Corp.

In May 2016, four Republican congressmen and three staff members spent 90,000 dollars on a five-day trip to Albania for a NATO summit. Republican lawmaker Mike Turner made the trip for 7,055 dollars while his colleague Jim Sensenbrenner spent 15,222 dollars for transportation.

"The expenses are due to a last-minute return flight," Sensenbrenner spokeswoman Nicole Tieman was quoted by a USA Today report as saying.

In another congressional trip made last summer, then Republican senator David Vitter and one staff member from the Small Business Committee spent a total of 37,000 dollars to travel to Britain and back, according to the congressional records.

There is no set dollar limit for U.S. lawmakers' global trips, the USA Today report explained. When U.S. Congress members decide to travel abroad, the State Department makes the arrangements and Treasury Department pays the bills.

In fact, the Congress' own accounting may be a low estimate. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, congressional travel cost nearly 20 million dollars last year, the highest figure ever recorded, based on data provided by the U.S. State Department. Neither Treasury nor State explain the discrepancy.

The pricey flights were part of a surge in foreign travel by the Congress people, said the report. Endit