Does The U.S. Congress Actually Work?

In the past four and a half years, members of Congress have taken nearly 5,000 trips. The cost of these trips was more than $14 million. And whose paying for it? Corporations and outside interest groups. The abuse of this system and the ethical implications of this are staggering.

This was an impressive investigation by Marketplace, American RadioWorks, and a team of graduate students from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, who cataloged every privately sponsored trip taken by members of the House or Senate since 2000. You can find out how much your representative and senators are travelling on corporate America's dime, where they're going, etc... . Some interesting things that come from the study:

• The top eight spenders and nine of the top 10 are Democrats with John Breaux from Louisiana leading the way with $158,311.92 and 208 days traveled (was he ever there?).
• While Democrats are big spenders overall, four of the top five most expensive trips have been Republican.
• Oregon's representatives in Congress are a mixed spending bag with our Senators roughly in the top 40% of the spending (with Gordon Smith getting/spending more than Ron Wyden), but three of representatives in the House are in the top 30% (with Earl Bluemenauer spending the most of any Oregonian).