online.wsj.com — One highlight: Republicans Richard Shelby of Alabama and John Cornyn of Texas went to Europe in August, for just over five days, to discuss regulatory reform of the banking industry. Their pleasure trips included one, in Germany, to a heavy metal festival. The total cost, for the two men, their spouses and aides, was $70,000. (Gawker headline).
Dec 16, 2009 View in Crawl 4
awhitmiDec 17, 2009
A lot of crap they can just hold a webinar for. I guess it's just a luxury of being a public servant?
jhw539Dec 17, 2009
Blink blink... That looks like a rational comment. On Digg. I have tears of joy in my eyes. 13 million per year is probably less than the travel budget for the CEOs of Google alone. Most members of Congress fly commercial (as Schumer's recent headlines for cussing at a stewardess re-emphasized), which could be why this cost number is so low (even if you double or triple it to account for the Air Force VIP fleet - which serves more than just Congress).
charles52Dec 17, 2009
I would much rather see the money paid for the defence of the country than wasted on a bunch of useless junkets which 99 percent of time accomplish nothing and 99 percent of the time end up in being very nice vacations for the most part
Closed AccountDec 17, 2009
This is the s**t that needs to change. Our government is full of crooks.
seltaeb4Dec 18, 2009
It's just another "THEY TOOK YER JOBS!" type of story.
seltaeb4Dec 18, 2009
Wow. You've generated an elaborate and continually evolving fiction which you fully believe to be true, while giving us a stream-of-conciouslness snippet from the mind of the average Fox viewer.There's a possibility you've left off the /s, or you're a troll... but I doubt it.Scary stuff...
Closed AccountDec 18, 2009
When our country is broke they need to make sacrifices so yes. They need to quit thinking like entitled nobility and more like servants of the people - or at the very least pretend when they know we are watching.
morpheousmartyDec 18, 2009
It's just a matter of scale. If the federal government spent 5 minutes considering every 13 million spent, it would take them 12 months straight of analysis to go through the budget (I just did the math assuming a 1.2 trillion dollar budget). That doesn't include time for sleeping, eating, or debating the costs. Every dime should go to worthwhile projects, but the fact of the matter is, 13 million isn't worth your time or mine. The time congress would have to use to save a maximum of 13 million dollars would ensure millions in another area are being spent without consideration. A quick back of the napkin calculation gave me that something should be worth at least 127 million before we ask 5 minutes of government time on the issue, or else they just won't have the time to consider the whole budget.
mrteleprompterDec 30, 2009
To everyone saying that this is just a small amount of money isn't looking at the bigger picture. Government spending is packed full of these $13 million "rounding errors", which in aggregate amount to a hell of a lot of money.