By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearPolicy
Between 2017 and 2021, more than 500 Congress members disclosed that they took more than 8,000 trips paid for by roughly 700 third-party organizations, according to an analysis by OpenTheBooks.com. While this practice is not illegal, it presents lawmakers with a conflict of interest.
That conflict of interest is most clearly seen through five nonprofit organizations that paid for 925 trips for members of Congress and their staff, who in turn got those organizations $102 million in federal funds over the five-year period we audited.
Members or staffers took about 2,600 trips to foreign destinations vs. about 5,490 trips to domestic destinations. Half the foreign trips went to just five popular overseas destinations: Israel (939); Berlin, Germany (103); Tokyo, Japan (100); Paris, France (102); and Brussels, Belgium (76).