Keep the change, Congressman!

The contemptible folk who write our laws (and who now want to determine whether, like President Obama, the rest of us are eligible for a virtual colonoscopy) have a particularly unpleasant habit of jetting about the world at the taxpayers' expense. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal wrote about the small-change aspect of these junkets. It seems that the Congressperson gets a per diem allowance, ranging from $28 in Kabul to $214 in Tokyo, to pay for his or her meals. (Actually, it ought to be the other way around: $28 in Tokyo, $214 in Kabul, to encourage the cheapskate Congressfolk to visit the city more important to America's near-term future.)

If you don't spend the money, of course, you're supposed to return it to the Treasury. The Journal managed to find one Congressman who does just that, so two cheers for Senator Arlen Specter, once a Republican, now a Democrat, who has returned $8,500 of the $25,000 per-diem money he was given for 11 trips over the past five and one-half years. But he seems to be the exception. More typical is Representative Solomon Ortiz, a Democrat, who not only doesn't return the leftover money but doesn't think he ought to: "If that was the policy," he told the Journal, "you could never get many members traveling."

I wonder if Mr Ortiz's Texas constituents could get away with arguing that line to the IRS when they fudge on their expense accounts? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford