Members of Congress lawmakers have come under fire for racking up nearly $15 million in official travel expenses, funded by the Treasury Department, in fiscal year 2022.
Although lawmakers' taxpayer-funded travel sharply declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, congressional travel costs soared during the past year from $1.3 million in fiscal year 2021 to almost $15 million the next year. This figure does not include the cost of traveling on military aircraft, since those costs are rarely disclosed.
Travel expenses for congressional delegations hit a high in 2016, according to records from the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service that date to 2011, with about $19.4 million spent during that fiscal year by members of the House and Senate.
"Clearly that $15 million last year is not the whole picture because of undisclosed use of military travel and generally we have a lack of disclosure," Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told USA Today. "We don't really know how taxpayer dollars are being used."
"COVID basically ground travel to a halt and we still appropriated the Army without a hitch," said Col. Nate Cook, the former chief of the U.S. Army Senate Liaison Division. "If we went to nothing and still got things done, does that mean we could have gone without spending that money?"
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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