"The Most Ethical Congress In History"
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats | Featured Stories — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Pentagon officials are bracing for a fight with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over her desire to allow lawmakers' adult children to tag along on taxpayer-funded travel for free.
Pelosi wants them to be able to fill the role of lawmakers' spouses when the latter are unable to make a trip because of health issues or work commitments.
"It has been longstanding policy that, in the absence of a congressional spouse, the adult child of a member of Congress may accompany the member on official U.S. government travel abroad for protocol reasons and without reimbursing the U.S.
Treasury," Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said. "Speaker Pelosi believes that a modern policy must reflect the professional responsibilities or health realities that might prevent a spouse from participating, and instead permit an adult child to fulfill the protocol needs of the official trip."Pentagon officials say the policy is that the Treasury must be reimbursed at commercial rates for children who accompany members on such trips, often called codels.
Pelosi's office inquired about such travel on June 1, according to a Department of Defense memo obtained by The Hill.
In a June 8 memo, the head of legislative affairs for the Pentagon, Robert L. Wilkie, told Defense Secretary Robert Gates that he sees Pelosi's question as a first step toward challenging the policy.
"We were told that the Speaker would expect that members' children (of married and unmarried [members of Congress]) would not have to reimburse the Treasury," Wilkie wrote. "We expect future challenges from the House leadership on this policy."
Pentagon aides did not respond to requests for comment.
But taxpayer watchdog groups and ethics advocates said they were surprised Pelosi would seek more perks for members.
"One of the things she was praised for when she came in was her sweeping reforms on gifts and travel," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen. "It is very disheartening if she is, in fact, backsliding on this."
Read on . . .
Well, she is backsliding. And there is no reason whatsoever why spouses or children should need to accompany Representatives on junkets. They interfere with the golf games, after all.
Seriously, this is appalling. One expected that the Speaker would have at least known enough to avoid this kind of chicanery. Such seeming contempt for taxpayer money on the part of the last Congress helped bring down Republicans, after all. Now, Nancy Pelosi seems to want to ensure that hers is one of the shortest-lived majorities in Congressional history.
And if there is any justice, it will be.
Just four weeks after Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House this past January, Gupta and InfoUSA hired her son as a senior vice president. He told NewsMax InfoUsa pays him $180,000 a year.
Even though his job with InfoUSA is considered full-time, Paul Pelosi continues another full-time job, as a home loan officer at Countrywide Home Loans, part of Countrywide Financial, in San Mateo, a suburb of San Francisco.
While InfoUSA is based in Omaha, Pelosi said he reports to a small InfoUSA office in San Mateo.
In two interviews, Paul Pelosi confirmed that Gupta hired him as senior vice president for strategic development starting Feb. 1, just after Pelosi's mother took the gavel as speaker on Jan. 4. He said his mother is aware of his new job.
A person familiar with the arrangement says Gupta treats Pelosi as a "trophy" and has the Speaker's son accompany him at high profile meetings around the country.
You could write a book on her 'problems'
Add the so called 'StarKist exemption' that she pushed in the minmum wage bill - help the hometown contributors.
Maybe we could get her to 'travel the road to Damascus' and stay there.