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Reid, Lott Top Senate List of Corporate Frequent Fliers
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ShareJanuary 08, 2007 5:23 PM
As the Senate begins to debate new ethics rules, a report on corporate jet travel for members of Congress finds Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., in the top 10 list of members with the largest number of trips over the past five years.
Unlike the ethics rules under consideration by the House, the Senate version does not include an outright ban on the use of corporate jets.
The list of corporate jet travelers was compiled by Political Money Line, based on financial disclosure statements from 2001 to 2005.
THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
Kent Cooper of Political Money Line says the corporate jet travel is one of the most valuable perks a member benefits from personally. "It's the ability to pick up the phone and ask for a private jet to be put at your disposal," he said.
According to the report, Lott reported 122 plane trips from corporations. Lott reimbursed the companies $165,724. Under current Senate rules, the reimbursement rate is set at the cost of first-class air travel, generally far less than the actual cost of private jet travel.
Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.
Among the companies Lott reimbursed for use of their private jets are U.S. Tobacco, Bell South, Federal Express and MCI.
While all the reports for last year haven't been filed yet, so far Lott has disclosed 18 trips in 2006, including a travel reimbursement of $1,322 to the R.J. Corman Company. Lott's son Chet is a registered lobbyist for R.J. Corman, a railroad construction company that did a lot of business rebuilding after Katrina.
See the record of Sen. Lott's corporate travel from 2001 to 2005.
Sen. Reid reported 35 trips and a reimbursement of $68,452 to companies including U.S. Tobacco, Shangri La Entertainment and the MGM Grand company.
See the record of Sen. Reid's corporate travel from 2001 to 2005.
"It's usually the member's office that initiates the call, asking for a favor. The corporations are happy to respond. Lobbyists know one good turn deserves another," Cooper said.
A spokesman for Majority Leader Reid told ABC News this afternoon that Sen. Reid and Sens. Barack Obama and Russ Feingold and Republican leader Mitch McConnell were working together today to prepare "a strengthened version" of the proposed Senate Ethics Bill "S1," which will be presented to the Senate tomorrow.
But even that strengthened version is unlikely to include a total ban on corporate jet travel.
According to his spokesman, "Sen. Reid has concerns about unintended consequences for senators from large states, where regular commercial traffic to rural areas is infrequent and incomplete. However, Sen. Reid is open to considering new ideas on this issue as the bill progresses on the floor."
Sen. Lott's office did not return repeated phone calls from ABC News seeking comment.
January 8, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (22)
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Re: ethics reform. I would feel better about our new congress if they would make it a point to address the real crime behind a corrupt congress.
Take Saipan for an example.
Remember when congress was so moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.
So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.
But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.
Now I think it is clear Tom Delay is immoral. However, the likes of Tom Delay could be hiding right behind the gavel.
Congress will be reformed when they actually put real peoples lives ahead of a single minded special interest group--even if it has millions to contribute!
Posted by: mark | Jan 10, 2007 5:10:35 PM
Uh have you seen the building they work in? Gov't started out here by, of, and for the priveleged class.
Why not make them work in cubicles like the rest of the country?
Why do they have marble bathrooms?
Of course you have to show up in your private, corporate fed jet -- it shows that not only are you arriving in style, your good friends are paying for it!
I just don't know how these corporations can afford to fly all these senators and congressman around... what about their own needs for the aircraft?
Do they just buy another 5-10 excess biz jets per major coporation for use by members of congress? It's starting to sound like they do
Posted by: A Liberal | Jan 10, 2007 5:57:28 PM
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