When they travel overseas, congress is paid per diem (a daily subsistance allowance based on local economies) even when they travel on government carriers and stay in government lodgings. The funds come from whichever entity is hosting or providing purpose to the visit. For example, when they come to EUCOM for briefings on whatever, they are paid per diem from DOD funds. There is a US Consulate in downtown Stuttgart, and many congressmen have had to dash from a briefing in Vaihingen (a suburb of Stuttgart where EUCOM is located) to the Consulate in order to receive a five minute briefing on State Department matters and guess what? The congressperson draws per diem from both DOD and State for the same day. I know this because a congressman explained it to me in detail as we raced down the hill to Stuttgart and his briefing at the Consulate. He bragged about it. And laughed.

One CODEL (Congressional Delegation) came to EUCOM to gather information about drug use in the command. They went all over Germany interviewing soldiers and leaders about drugs then set up a committee room in the NCO Club at Patch Barracks to hear testimony from all the people they had already interviewed. The high point of the hearings was the testimony of an old Sergeant Major who, when asked how drug problems were handled during the Korean War. His straight-faced, gruff answer brought howls from the military gallery and shocked silence from the delegation..."We put 'em on point" was his simple solution to the drug problem. Anyway, the CODEL consisted of about a bunch of people: four or five members of congress, their spouses, and about 25 to 30 support staff. The congressmen were put up in hotels in town but the majority of the "horse-holders" were billeted at the Visiting Officers' Quarters (VOQ). Patch is the home of US EUCOM, United States European Command and is a small post. The distance from the NCO Club to the VOQ is less than 500 yards. A 45 passenger Army bus was provided to take the support staff from the VOQ to the Club in the morning and back at the end of the day. It wasn't good enough. It was too much like a city bus, way below the standards of these folks. We had to rent a full sized German Tour Bus complete with toilet and bar, the justification was that they may need to move everyone to a meeting elsewhere, or take them all to a restaurant. None of which took place. This tour bus made one trip to the club in the morning and one return in the evening, most trips the bus was less than half full because folks would walk. The rest of the day it sat in the NCO Club parking lot, motor running for the AC, sucking up your tax dollars.

We had a visit from a young Rep from Arizona. He skipped a whole day of briefings so he could go to Ramstein, a hundred or so miles away, and get a ride in an F-15. He told us that it was the main reason he came on the trip in the first place.

A couple of southern Reps who both had reputations as staunch Baptists, all for ethics and morals, chose to stay at a hotel in town rather than the cheaper and closer room at the Q. You can't take "guests" into your rooms at the Q. The next morning the conversation in the sedan on the way to Patch was all about the breakfast waitress, her physical attributes, and how she compared with the ladies they had seen the night before, and what they would like to do with those attributes. This conversation was in the vulgarest, coarsest language you could imagine.

One congressman's wife insisted on being driven from Stuttgart to Nurnburg to join her husband because he was coming to Stuttgart on a helicopter in the morning and she wanted to be photographed getting off the chopper with him. The trip from Stuttgart to Nurnburg in those days was about a two and a half to three hour drive in good conditions. We were supposed to have her there by six o'clock. She insisted on stopping in the city to get a "wax" and pick up a snack. She wasn't ready to go until well after four. Throw in an accident and fifty miles of heavy fog and we wound up being more than an hour late. I handed her over to an irate Army colonel, he smiled at her and glared at me. As soon as he guided her into the ball room where a reception had been going on without her for some time, a local protocol officer swooped down on me demanding I explain myself. I opened the trunk, handed him the two massive suitcases needed to support an overnight stay, and told him I had a long drive in bad conditions to get back to Stuttgart and by the time I got there, he would fully understand every thing he needed to know about why I had been late. The fog got thicker, covered twice the area as it had earlier. I got home about midnight. Early the next morning I was at the helipad while the cameras clicked and the TV crews filmed, watching Lovely Rita step out of the helicopter with her John (there is a pun there), in her skin tight jeans, spike heels, and full length mink coat. Within a couple years, she had posed for Playboy, showing some thatch and bragging about having sex with her husband on the steps of the capitol building. Her husband was busted during ABSCAM and wound up going to prison.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen congressmen and senators walk out of briefings to go shopping for cameras, stereos, cars, etc. EUCOM has a set of canned briefings they give but the majority of briefing time consists of responses to issues and questions generated by the congresspeople themselves. Military staffers spend long hours, sometimes up to a week, to gather info and coalate it into a coherant briefing and then see the glassy look in the briefee's eyes, if they are open, or get cut off as the briefee stands up and says he has seen enough, "gets it" and now could we go over to the Mercedes factory in Sindelfingen?

There is a lot more, but it gets so redundant. One of the protocol officers I worked with at Patch told me she would never vote for any politician who traveled to Europe on the public fund. Me, too. There are a few who came through who were not out to fleece the government (read: you) but they were rare. Most of the visitors from congress had a common failing: They see themselves as selfless servants of the people, and they have earned the privileges they enjoy. Others see them as selfish users of the people who feel entitled to be priviledged. In many cases they don't even realize or conslider the costs and inconvenience they cause...or they do and don't care.

This is based on twenty year old experiences I had as a protocol "operative". But if you think it is ancient history, consider the current Queen of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who wanted to be provided a larger plane than any of her predecessors have had. She needed it. Security, range, all that. She needed that 45 passenger capacity... but those pesky CEOs, they should just ride a bus...but not a tour bus.