Every year, hundreds of members of Congress and their staff take privately sponsored trips in March and April, jetting to cities across the country and the globe. Until this year, when just a single trip has been disclosed in that same time frame.
That lone trip to Naples, Fla. by a staffer from Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.)'s office cost the sponsor, a center at the Ave Maria Law School, $1,951. The March 5-7 jaunt is likely to be the last for a while.
Although privately sponsored travel tends to peak in the summer months, according to LegiStorm data, spending in March and April is usually substantial. From 2010 to 2019, there was an average of 306 trips between March and April, with average total expenditures of $264,265 and $416,080 for each month respectively. Three Aprils during this time period saw spending over $600,000: 2011, 2014 and 2017.
During March and April of 2019, staffers flew to Havana, Cuba to meet with small business owners, traveled to Guatemala City, Guatemala to learn about women's issues, headed to Boston for a climate change seminar and went to Palo Alto for a Stanford University event. Others taveled to Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, London and Lebanon. In total, private organizations spent just shy of $1 million to ferry policy makers around the world and across the country.
Prior to the virus putting a stop to travel, 2020 was looking typical. In February of this year, 235 congressional staffers and members of Congress took sponsored trips, for a total of expenditure of $599,674.
At least one major, annual trip got in just under the wire: From Feb. 19 to 21, 98 chiefs of staff from Republican offices attended a conference sponsored by Congressional Institute Inc., which has funded more trips than any other organization. Future trips by that group and others are likely to take a hit from the virus. In May 2019, the Congressional Institute convened 150 Republican staffers in Baltimore and in June of last year, it gathered 259 staffers in Virginia.
