Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos WASHINGTON — Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands. The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records . Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. The cost of as “codelso-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers s,” has risen nearly 70% since 2005 , when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by... [read full story]
