Retiring lawmakers keep traveling

Nothing illegal about the trips, but some question cost for taxpayers

WASHINGTON – Last September, Rep. Charlie Dent became the latest in a large cohort of members of Congress to announce his retirement.

About a month later, Dent, a seventerm Pennsylvania Republican and former chairman of the House ethics committee, arrived in Italy on the first leg of a six-day, three-nation trip at taxpayer expense that included stops in Belgium and Luxembourg. The cost to taxpayers for Dent’s trip: nearly $7,000.

His post-retirement announcement travel habits are hardly unique. At least 17 retiring members of Congress have gone on overseas trips after announcing they were not going to seek re-election, according to travel information included in the Congressional Record. All were on the taxpayer’s dime – a total cost of nearly $190,000.

There is nothing illegal about the trips, and all were signed off on by the chairman of the committee under whose authority the trip was taken. But they do raise the question of how much benefit the constituents get.

“The problem is many of these trips are really much more like paid vacations than fact-finding trips,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the good-government group Public Citizen.

In some cases, the public interest of the trips is obvious, as when Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., who announced in December that he was retiring, traveled to Canada and Mexico shortly thereafter to join negotiations on a new North American Free Trade Agreement. His trip cost taxpayers $5,327. Rep. David Reichert, R- Wash., who announced his retirement in September 2017, attended the talks in Canada with Levin.

In most cases, there were no announcements by the members or other information made public.