Lawmakers Not Practicing What They’re Preaching With Budget Mess, Overseas Trips Planned, Pay Cut Fought

They fought Friday to keep their six-figure paychecks, while proposing that other federal workers come in for free to keep the government going.

They planned to escape chilly Washington for warm nations overseas - at taxpayer expense - while national museums and monuments remain closed.

Members of the U.S. Congress found themselves the target of taxpayer rage Friday, and many seemed hard pressed to defend themselves.

“The public is, as it should be, particularly upset,” said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who put an eight-day trip to five Caribbean and Latin American nations on hold until the budget crisis is resolved.

Others kept their bags packed, even after a front-page article in the Washington Post exposed plans by 25 congressional delegations to travel abroad in the next three weeks.

Sen. Arlen Specter, who asked U.S. diplomats overseas to supply him with fresh squash balls and air-conditioned courts in every Mideast and African nation he visited, left Thursday for a 13-day trip.

Disgruntled State Department employees, their ranks already stretched thin by the shutdown, sent a bitter memo to their bosses in Washington, complaining that the Pennsylvania Republican went so far as to specify which type of squash ball they were to buy for him.

State Department staffing has declined at least 15 percent in the last three years, and another 20 percent of U.S. diplomats abroad are on furlough.

On Friday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich “strongly advised” members to postpone any overseas trips until a budget agreement is reached.

In a statement, the speaker said he anticipated “a number of key votes” when Congress reconvenes Jan. 3.

Several lawmakers said they had already postponed or canceled their trips.

Many others said their travel plans would be canceled unless there was a budget agreement. House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman, R-N.Y., told his office before Christmas: “No budget, no trip.”

But many others refused to delay the trips - some of them barely disguised sightseeing junkets - despite personal appeals by State Department officials.

“They were in the embarrassing position of saying, ‘Look, we can’t offer to carry all the bags of the members of Congress who are traveling,”’ White House spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters.

Adding to the furor over travel, House Republicans beat back a Democratic proposal Friday to cut their pay in half, in line with that of fellow federal employees, until the budget crisis is settled.

The proposal has passed the Senate - unanimously - three times.

In a meeting at the White House the same day, Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., proposed a plan that would have brought the 280,000 furloughed employees back to work with only a promise that they would be paid when a budget is passed.

Another 480,000 workers who have remained on the job received only partial paychecks this week because Congress has not approved full funding for their agencies.

Rank-and-file House members are paid $133,600 a year; Gingrich gets $171,500; Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, gets $148,400, as does Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.

Graham said he had put his trip on hold even before the Washington Post story. Sens. Graham; Mike DeWine, R-Ohio; and Richard Bryan, D-Nev., plan to research political changes, drug smuggling and economic issues in Haiti, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile.

They were to meet Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and President-elect Rene Preval on Wednesday and Colombian President Ernesto Samper on Thursday.

The trip will not take place unless a budget compromise is reached by Tuesday, Graham said.

Diplomats said the long-planned trip by the three senior members of the Senate Intelligence Committee differed from other, less-strenuous trips by junior or retiring lawmakers.

“The DeWine-Graham-Bryan congressional delegation is the kind of mission that must take place,” said Tex Harris, director of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents State Department workers.

“The serious congressional leaders, sitting on the Senate intelligence Committee, need a firsthand, clear understanding of the issues that America faces in Haiti, Colombia, Peru and Chile.”