Trips to Yucca rank high among lawmakers

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 | 10:50 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress took 159 privately funded trips to Las Vegas in the past four years on Yucca Mountain fact-finding missions, often paid for by the pro-Yucca nuclear power industry, a new study found.

The study, led by Northwestern University's Medill News Service, also examined the privately funded travel of every member of Congress from Jan. 1, 2000, to June 30, 2004, and ranked them by the amounts that private groups spent on travel for lawmakers.

Congressional rules allow lawmakers to take trips paid for by lobbyists, academic organizations and private interests. Lawmakers also take trips paid for by Congress -- taxpayers -- but the Medill study examined only privately funded trips.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., ranked 30th on the list of 583 lawmakers in the survey. There are 535 members of Congress, but the study dated to 2000 and new lawmakers were elected in 2002.

Berkley had $82,359 worth of travel, the study said. The study said she traveled for 51 days on nine trips since Jan. 1, 2000, often with her husband, to places including New York; Taiwan; India; Barcelona, Spain; and two trips each to Greece and Israel.

According to the study, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., ranked 289th, with $14,954 in trips. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., ranked 332nd with $12,235 worth of trips. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., ranked 408th with $6,874 worth of trips. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., ranked 536th with $1,248 in travel.

Nevada was the fifth most popular lawmaker destination, largely due to trips made by lawmakers to Las Vegas to visit Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of a national nuclear waste dump. The nuclear industry lobby group Nuclear Energy Institute paid for most of the trips.

The Medill study found that overall, private groups paid nearly $14.4 million for 4,851 trips for lawmakers in the last four and a half years. Critics say the trips allow lobby groups to buy access to lawmakers that typical citizens cannot afford. But the lobby groups say the trips cannot buy votes and they offer lawmakers invaluable education on issues while saving taxpayer money.

Some lawmakers took no trips. Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va., took the most expensive trip in the Medill study, a $31,000 trip to England in July 2000 paid for by Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp.