On Tom Delay Situation

USATODAY.com - Travel by Congress often paid privately: "Members of Congress have taken $16 million in privately financed trips since 2000, and more than half were sponsored by non-profit groups that don't have to disclose who is providing the money, a study out today says...
The issue of who pays for lawmakers' travel is under increased scrutiny because of an ethics controversy involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who took trips that may have been paid for by prohibited sources. Privately paid travel is permitted under the rules, but expenses cannot be paid for by a lobbyist or by a representative of a foreign interest...
It found that $8.8 million of the travel expenses were paid for by tax-exempt and other groups whose funding sources aren't public. DeLay is under fire in part because one such group, the National Center for Public Policy Research, paid for a trip to Britain in 2000 that may have been at least partly paid for by a lobbyist, which is against House rules...the rules don't allow lobbyists to pay for trips but permit their employers to do so. "The fiction is that the same conflict doesn't exist when the lobbyist's employer, a corporation or a trade association, pays for the travel and the lobbyist goes along," ...

• DeLay took 14 trips valued at $94,568. He ranked 28th for value of trips, and 114th in the number taken.

• Democrats took 3,025 trips; Republicans, 2,375; independents, 10.
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I am assuming all of this will come to light when the House finally changes the rules so that hearings will be held by the Ethics Comm. I haven't bothered to post but I think Drudge reported this week that all of Congress was frantically getting records in order to comply with the rules. It is mostly all to me unethical but allowed by rule. In my mind we, the people, should just pay for all the trips and get it over with and avoid any tint of influence - admit if you are in Congress you have an unlimited expense account if you can explain your time to the people voting for you next time and withstand the scruntity of the press.