John Fund in The Wall Street Journal:
House leaders hope that dropping plans to spend $550 million on elite Gulfstream jets to fly members around the globe will dissipate public ire. I’m not so sure. Voters are strapped by the weak economy and angry about how health-care reform is being rushed through Congress. More revelations about congressional travel are coming.
Frequent flying by Congress is a growth industry. As the Journal’s Brody Mullins reported this month, House members last year spent some 3,000 days overseas on taxpayer-funded trips, up from about 550 in 1995. This month, 11 separate congressional delegations will visit Germany.
No one begrudges members visiting U.S. troops or conferring with key leaders in other countries. But with so many trips, boondoggles are inevitable.
The total cost for congressional overseas travel is never made public because the price tag for State Department advance teams and military planes used by lawmakers are folded into much larger budgets. Members of Congress must only report the total per diem reimbursements they receive in cash for hotels, meals and local transport.
Please read the whole thing. You are not going to like what you read. Up to $3,000 per day for every member of Congress and each of their staffers in per diem allowances. Lax reporting requirements for how those per diems are spent and scant evidence that unused per diem funds are ever returned to the treasury. Flying for free on military aircraft to places like London and Paris – well served by commercial airlines. There is just soooooo much to hate here.
There are some 538 members of Congress. 3,000 days overseas on “fact finding” trips is about 5-1/2 days per member. Lord only knows how many staffers go along on each junket. We pay for all of this.
Air Pelosi is out of control. Time to end the gravy planes.
A smart Crew Chief/Plane Captain could screw everything up for the pelousy crowd in a very simple way. Down the airplane. The most poerful digit in military aviation is the thumb. If it is up they go flying, if it’s down, they don’t go flying. Since the Crew Chief/Plane Captain is the last one to determine whether an aircraft is ready/safe for flight, it is pretty easy. I know, I downed my CO once and he was not a happy camper. All it took was a small hydraulic leak.
As maintainers we are all tasked with the responsibility of ensuring the aircraft is ready to go. And, believe it or not, we also use it as a tool for attitude adjustment.
Without us in the maintenance units/departments nobody goes flying. Period.
So, the next time the sphincter of the house is in that VC-32A, turning and burning in the chocks, give it a thumbs down. It will get attention, and I hope to G-d that the NCO/PO will be willing to stand firm and tell the ops boys that the airplane is broke.