Senator Kerry is shocked at business travel and entertainment expenses and wants to curtail them.
Last week as General Motors and Chrysler were submitting their latest recovery proposals to the U.S. Treasurer Department, Congressional leaders who excoriated Detroit-based executives for their management abilities and business practices continued using your tax dollars to pay for non-commercial jets. It is a striking, but by no means only, example of Washington “ethics” at work. Congress in the midst of the global financial collapse continues to do what it wants and not what it says you or companies should do.
Consider Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, who issued the following statement following a meeting at the Vatican with his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI: “It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI today. In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show his Holiness a photograph of my family’s Papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.”
So Pelosi was in Rome as Detroit and the economy were burning. And how did Pelosi get to Rome? Why aboard an Air Force jet.
And it’s not just Democrats who abuse this privilege; Republican lawmakers regularly fly around the world on Air Force jets. Shouldn’t they be cutting back and watching how they spend our tax dollars so we can fix the economy? We have an almost $11 trillion national debt, and this year’s budget shortfall is already $1.3 trillion and rising.
However, such is Congressional outrage at business travel and entertainment by people other than themselves that Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a senior member of the Finance Committee, today announced plans to introduce legislation “to end the extravagant spending practices” of U.S. banks that received taxpayer dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Kerry’s TARP Taxpayer Protection and Corporate Responsibility Act would prevent any recipient of TARP funds from hosting, sponsoring, or paying for conferences, holiday parties and entertainment events. Any TARP recipient that misused the funds would be fined and required to reimburse the government.
Let’s see here: TARP legislation was passed by Congress to help failing financial institutions and improve our collapsing economy, but if a business spends money on conferences or parties entertaining customers, thereby helping our struggling commercial airlines or the travel industry and increasing its own business, that’s bad.
“I’m sick and tired of picking up the newspaper and reading about another idiotic abuse of taxpayer money while our country is on the brink,” says Kerry. “Americans who play by the rules are losing their jobs and struggling to pay their mortgages. The companies that came to Congress in desperate need of help to stay afloat become their own worst enemies when they pull stunts like this.”
Well, yes maybe in the case of the lavish party by Northern Trust that Kerry cited, which currently owes taxpayers $1.6 billion. But what of all the entertaining in politics, and campaign trips paid for by taxpayers under the guise of official duties? Or how about when Congress exempts itself from the national no call directory that forbids businesses from using phone solicitations to the people who register, but allows the use of computerized demon dialers by our elected representatives trying to keep their jobs?
President Obama vows to change the “bad habits” of Washington. I hope he succeeds, starting with Congress.