Friday, April 22, 2005 | 11:17 a.m.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., this morning jumped aboard a corporate airplane owned by FedEx for a brief hop to Pittsburgh for a Social Security town hall meeting. It wasn't the first time Reid flew on a corporate plane.
In the past two years, Reid was the third-leading user of corporate jets among Congress' 535 members, and the only Democrat in the top 10, according to federal records. Reid took 26 trips during that time, reimbursing companies $58,388.
The practice of lawmakers using private planes is perfectly legal, although some critics say it offers corporations access to lawmakers that much of the public couldn't afford.
Reid today said he has followed all congressional rules in using corporate planes. Reid, who is in his first year as Senate Democratic leader, is in demand as a fundraiser and as spokesman of his party. He frequently flies to events all over the country. Commercial flights sometimes can't accommodate Reid's itinerary, he said.
"It's not always practical -- you see my schedule today," Reid said.
Reid and several other Democratic lawmakers this morning hosted a town hall meeting in front of a friendly audience in a northwest Washington, D.C., neighborhood, calling on President Bush to drop his proposal to privatize Social Security. After today's stop in Pittsburgh, the lawmakers will fly corporate FedEx jets to two similar events Saturday in Providence, R.I., and Columbus, Ohio.
Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen noted that Reid typically flies commercial. "He takes Southwest a lot more often than he uses corporate jets," she said.
Reid turned to a high-profile lawyer in a previous Social Security event tour.
In early March, Reid, Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, needed to fly from Washington to New York, then on to Philadelphia, Phoenix and Las Vegas to campaign against Bush's proposals. The solution: an eight-passenger jet owned by the Oxford, Mississippi, law firm of Richard Scruggs.
The three senators split the bill, with Reid's office paying $2,126.70. On the return leg to Washington on the Scruggs jet, Reid, 65, his wife Landra and an aide reimbursed Scruggs a total of $2,808 from Reid's political-action committee, Hafen said. Chartering an eight-seat Lear 35 jet for the round trip would normally cost $31,141.77, according to the Web site of Bombardier Skyjet, a division of Bombardier Inc. that charters small aircraft. The same itinerary on the same type of plane would cost $27,968.76, according to the One Sky Network, an online market for aircraft charter operators.
Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, best known as a promoter of good corporate governance, is the No. 1 user of corporate jets.
Oxley, a Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and sponsor of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, has flown at least 44 times on aircraft provided by corporations during the past two years, federal disclosures show.
While U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has drawn fire for taking trips paid for by lobbyists, lawmakers are increasingly taking advantage of a loophole in campaign-finance laws by flying to election and fund-raising events on jets owned by companies such as UST Inc., FedEx Corp. and Stanford Financial Group Co. Since the cost is a fraction of the price the lawmakers would pay to charter a jet, campaign-finance experts say the practice, though legal, constitutes a conflict of interest.
"What is the difference for a public official between taking a corporate jet and having the same corporation provide money to buy an airline ticket?" said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington. "The ethical principle is the same: a benefit is being received, and implicitly a debt of some type is owed."
Lawmakers' aides say they have little choice. Members of Congress can't rely on commercial airline schedules because campaign and fund-raising commitments are so demanding, they say. Also, lawmakers are required by law to reimburse the companies from their campaign accounts or political action committees at the cost of a first-class airline ticket or charter rate.
In the past two years, lawmakers and their staffs reimbursed companies $2.2 million for 1,346 trips on private jets through their political-action and campaign committees, according to an analysis of campaign-finance disclosures by Washington-based PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks the spending. In the previous two- year period, they paid $1 million for 702 trips.
Sun Washington Bureau Chief Benjamin Grove contributed to this story.
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