Group tallies House leader’s junkets, jet rides

WASHINGTON – House Majority Leader John Boehner, Ohio, who rose to power in the wake of a congressional lobbying scandal, spent the equivalent of nearly six months on privately funded trips over the past six years, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.

The Center for Public Integrity said that Boehner accepted 42 privately sponsored trips from January 2000 to December 2005. That put him on the road to foreign countries and “golfing hotspots,” often with his wife, Debbie, for about half a year, “only nine days of which he listed as being ‘at personal expense,’ ” the center said.

Boehner also flew at least 45 times on corporate jets owned by companies “with a financial stake in congressional affairs” from June 2001 through September 2005, the center reported. The corporations on whose planes Boehner flew included tobacco companies such as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (15 times), UST Inc. (seven times), and Swisher International Inc. (seven times).

“Boehner is one of Congress’ most frequent corporate fliers,” Roberta Baskin, executive director of the center, said, based on a review of other lawmakers’ disclosure forms.

The report is the most detailed and comprehensive look at the new majority leader. Boehner, elected to the post last month, had been criticized by lawmakers who opposed his elevation for being too close to lobbyists.

Boehner rejected that characterization and offered himself as an agent of change, especially on the issue of congressional ethics. The center concluded, however, that Boehner built “a network of political and business relationships” with corporations and other interests “not unlike” his predecessor, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, whose tenure in the job was controversial in large part because of his close ties to lobbyists and lobbying groups.

In the early debate over how to crack down on lobbyists – a byproduct of the guilty plea in January of former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff – Boehner had been a leading opponent of a ban on privately paid travel.

Boehner pushed instead for enhanced disclosure of privately provided benefits including travel, meals and gifts – the direction the House now appears to be taking in pending legislation. In the meantime, he has accepted a compromise that would ban privately paid travel this year until the House ethics committee devises new rules.

Kevin Madden, a Boehner spokesman, defended the lawmaker’s trips as legal, proper and educational. He said Boehner’s initial enmity toward a ban on private trips was not because he has taken so many of them.

Rather, Madden pointed to the center’s report as proof that disclosure works well. Madden said the study was possible because of the thorough disclosures Boehner made through the years and which he now advocates expanding. The center was able to detail Boehner’s activities because his trips, “in each and every instance, were promptly and publicly disclosed according to law,” Madden said.