Look What Congress Wants to Hide from You Now

Is it fair that special interest groups can legally wine, dine and pamper our nation’s legislators at luxury resorts? Let’s not kid ourselves – when politicians are treated to $10,000+ getaways, someone is expecting something in return. Although it should be outlawed outright, until recently, at least politicians had to disclose such trips on financial disclosure forms that the public could access. Now, however, this stipulation has been removed from the form, reports National Journal.

These financial documents – which won’t be available moving forward, apparently – reveal that members of Congress and their top staffers went on nearly 2,000 compensated trips in 2013 alone, with private interests picking up the over $6 million price tag.

It’s an open secret that lobbyists gain access to and court federal politicians through these trips that they “indirectly” sponsor. Rather than curbing this behavior altogether to prevent corruption, members of Congress decided to instead obligate themselves to admit to taking these vacations. For as long as Congress has been required to fill out financial disclosures, these trips were a necessary part of the form.

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